Now Die For Me, Son
by keepcalmandkissmequick
Summary: Captain Jack Harkness did what he needed to do. He was brave and resilient and defiant when he needed to be, and he was humiliated and submissive and shattered when he needed to be. And when the time came, he saved the world without letting a single Time Lord or Jones see that he himself needed saving.
1. Say Something Justifying Your Distress

**Chapter One: Say Something Justifying Your Distress**

* * *

Ianto Jones allowed the porcelain to sear into his hand before passing the coffee mug to Gwen. The secret burn was a welcome reminder that there was more to the world than any one person could see.

"Ianto!" Owen snapped his fingers impatiently without glancing away from the little green aliens that he was demolishing on his computer screen. A year ago Ianto would have responded to Owen by plotting a decaf attack and four months ago he would have contrived to spill a bit of scalding coffee somewhere sensitive, but today he refrained from retaliation as he distributed the final cup. He got a nod in response.

"All right!" Ianto clapped his hands together brightly. "All sorted." He trailed off, hoping for Tosh to report or Owen to grouch or Gwen to take charge. The unsteady balance they'd struck over the last four months had toppled with the return of their leader. No one knew where they stood. "Well then. I'm going to..." he gestured vaguely into the depths of the hub.

"Should I let you know when...?" Gwen trailed off uncertainly.

He nodded once, decisively. "Better should, yeah." Then Ianto retreated to his sanctuary to wait out however long it took for Captain Jack Harkness to find his way home.

~~TW~~

The doll had been carefully preserved despite its rough make. Ianto could imagine a common labourer crafting it for his daughter sometime in the last century. He wondered how it had made its way into Jack's collection.

He shifted the toy aside to reach the items he could do something for. There was a threadbare infant's blanket, a pair of ancient wedding rings, a key with a simple round head. Ianto had researched every item, stolen-second-by-stolen-second, in an attempt to understand the man who'd preserved them so carefully. At first he'd felt guilty about prying into another man's secrets, but then Jack had dropped the bombshell of his own immortality and abandoned them without a word of explanation, so Ianto reckoned he had the right to look at an old key as much as he felt like. He'd even found himself cleaning the little collection in its owner's absence. Something about watching his Captain's history being marred by dust had become unbearable. He'd thought that he was relaxed, but he jerked so violently that he almost dropped the doll when Gwen paged him. Her voice was terse.

"He's here."

~~TW~~

Their arrangement was intentionally casual when their leader arrived, but Jack wasn't fooled. "Watching me on the CCTV?" It wasn't really a question. An obnoxious tone sounded as Owen lost his game. Jack examined each of their faces expectantly, then seemed to mistake their collective silence as sign that everything could be back to normal.

"Can't blame you. Had a guy follow me around for three days, once. I had to lie and tell him I didn't do tentacles to finally get him off me." He shrugged. "It's the pheromones. Segueing off of that, we have three violent homicides in Splot. Suspected alien involvement so, Tosh, if you could run the—"

"Where were you?" interrupted Gwen.

Caught by surprise, it took Jack a moment to regain his poise and charm. "Doesn't matter. I'm here now."

"Does, actually." Owen stood up. "Tell us where you went."

The questions came so rapidly after that that Jack couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise if he'd wanted to.

"Where are you from?"

"How old are you?"

"Why are you immortal?"

Ianto stepped forward with a question of his own. "Who's Gray?" He didn't know what reaction he'd expected, but it wasn't the anguish and grief that crossed Jack's face. Perhaps Ianto had misunderstood the nature of Jack's relationship to Gray.

Jack tilted his chin up and then settled it back down in the nod that meant he was making a resolution. "I was trapped in a time paradox." Jack's eyes flitted from face to face, judging whether or not they believed him. "For a year. I was on this planet, but it was being destroyed. Billions died. I was made to watch it burn. It was the end of the world."

"In that other timeline, what happened to us?" Ianto asked softly, looking to Jack's face for clues. And then he knew. "We died there, didn't we?"

Jack looked him in the eye, unflinching. "Yeah," he answered as softly. Then he shook his head once, sharply and unconsciously, to dispel the memories. "But that timeline reverted," he reassured himself along with them. "The world shifted back to the reality that existed when I left. I came back for you as quickly as I could."

"As quickly as you could – you do realize it's been _four months_, don't you?" Owen intruded.

Jack turned to him, his blue eyes alight again. "Imagine trying to calibrate a rickety old patchwork time machine to precise locative and chronological coordinates with the whole of the rift to contend with. Then imagine that your pilot throws all of your carefully calculated coordinates out the window and tries to find your century with nothing more than trial and error and a handful of coloured knobs. I'd say being only four months off is pretty damn good."

The display of humour and nonchalance was convincing enough to make Ianto doubt that it was a façade at all. The palpable tension thinned, Owen grunting and returning to his game as Tosh delved back into her devilish numbers. Jack conferred quietly with Gwen, eyebrows and grin in full play at every opportunity. Everything looked so goddamn sincere. Ianto couldn't help hoping that the team dynamics could revert along with the aborted timeline. You knew things were bad when you looked back on the violence and horror of typical Torchwood as comforting, but there you were.

As he left to fetch more coffee, Ianto caught a glimpse of Jack reaching out to brush his fingers along the back of Tosh's chair.

~~TW~~

"Well," Tosh announced brightly. "I think I'm done here, then."

Ianto looked up, surprised. It was only 32 minutes past official if-the-world-isn't-exploding-you-can-go-home-now-t ime. Tosh typically couldn't peel herself away from the machines until at least an hour later. But today she looped the strap of her laptop case over her shoulder and was gone.

He heard a door shut softly nearby as Jack exited his office. Ah. That was why everyone else had been in such a hurry to leave. They thought that he and Jack... what exactly? Was there an official term for when your boss murders your girlfriend then adopts you as a part-time shag? Did that description even cut it anymore?

There was something else there, niggling at the back of his consciousness since Jack died that second time. When he willfully sacrificed himself to save the team that had just rebelled against him, when it didn't look like he was going to wake back up. Ianto had initially tried to catalogue the irritant into one of the neat little corners of his mind, but it had stung his raw consciousness and forced him to shy away. And now he didn't think there were any neat little corners left in his mind to put it in.

"Ianto." Jack's voice was maddeningly neutral. Ianto suddenly regretted his decision _not_ to spin around and punch the Captain as soon as he reappeared.

"Hello Jack," he answered cautiously. The other man lurched forward and encapsulated him in an unexpected bear hug. Ianto hugged him back fiercely, but his traitorous mind was already reeling away to last night, when this man had asked him out on what sounded suspiciously like a date. He'd always assumed Jack was above all that, assumed that he somehow came from a time when this single "pair-bond" was antiquated. Besides, Jack didn't seem to take him seriously enough to bother with the charade. _If he had_, Ianto couldn't help thinking. _Then he wouldn't have left me without saying goodbye_. So it obviously couldn't have been an honest invitation. Or could it? Was Jack about to follow up with plans for dinner and a movie?

"Ianto, would you stay here tonight?" Jack finished.

_Of course. _Ianto valiantly fought the sinking disappointment in the pit of his stomach. He and Jack had a well-established relationship. There was no reason that some chronologically abnormal event should change any of that.

"Ianto?" Jack probed.

"Of course," Ianto repeated out loud, startled. Jack didn't typically bother waiting for the clear and sober yes.

They made it downstairs to Jack's quarters before walking became an impossibility. Ianto shoved Jack up against the inside of the closed door, breathing him in, and Jack pushed back with equal fervor until they fell onto the bed together in a tangled mass of limbs.

Jack deftly unbuttoned Ianto's waistcoat and he shrugged it off in a practiced motion, fingers already fumbling at the top buttons of Jack's overshirt. But just as his shirt was going to pull all the way free, Jack stiffened. Ianto tried to kiss him again, but his mouth had grown unresponsive. Ianto slowly pulled away, afraid that he had done something very wrong.

"Um, Jack?"

"Yeah?" The other man's voice was _very_ tight.

"Are you... alright?"

"Yes. I'm fine. I'm... Sorry." Jack sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Ianto again felt a surge of disappointment, quickly followed by frustration at his fickle mind.

"That's all right." It wasn't, actually. Ianto deserved more answers then he ever got from his lover. "Where you thinking of someone else, Jack?" Images of a sculpted John Hart flashed across his mind.

Jack was silent for so long that Ianto didn't think he was going to answer. Then, finally, the dreaded response: "Yeah."

"Oh." Something punctured deep inside of Ianto, and he automatically blocked it out to quarantine the leak. He knew that he'd been stupid to allow the weakness in the first place, to shelter the dreams and fantasies instead of quashing them. Like there could ever be more than there already was between him and Jack, what with the past partners and the mysterious Grays and the galaxies of unimaginable wonder that were part of Jack's life. Ianto was nothing but an inconsequential blip in time against a raging maelstrom of brilliance. _I never stood a chance,_ "I understand," he said firmly. "That makes sense. Don't worry about it. You don't need to feel obligated to me."

Ianto must have failed to completely isolate the disappointment because Jack responded sharply. "That's not what I meant. It's not like that. Here." He shoved Ianto over onto his back again and climbed on top of him, fumbling with the buttons on his own shirt. "I can—"

"No." Ianto pushed Jack off of him and struggled back up. "Not if you don't want to. But if it's not like that... then how is it?"

Jack turned away to rebutton his own shirt hurriedly, tripping over the words in his haste to get them out. "There's no one else – no one like you – I just can't – I can't talk about it." Jack looked at him helplessly, and Ianto realized with a jolt that the other man honestly didn't know what to say. That was a first.

Ianto relented. "Here. Come on." He slipped under the comforter and pulled Jack in after him, resting the other man's head on his own chest. He met no resistance. _How original. Beds actually used for sleeping in_. He started to point the irony out to Jack, but the other man was already asleep.

* * *

~~TW~~

When Ianto woke the next morning, the bed beside him was cold and Jack was gone. The first person he encountered as he padded groggily out was Tosh. "Well?" she asked in way of greeting. He realized that she was looking for reassurance about their leader. He calculated how far he could stretch the truth.

"He's... a bit distracted, I think. But don't worry. He'll work his way through."

"Distracted by what, exactly?"

"The year that never happened, John Hart, a rip in his coat, I don't know... I think," he considered. "I _think_ that he's remembering something that he doesn't want to remember. Something, ah," he flushed. "Sexual."

"Ah. Do you think this... _thing_... is related to John Hart?"

"Dunno. Hope not. But, _honestly_..." Ianto shook his head ruefully.

"Yeah," Tosh agreed.

They both stared off into space for a moment, marveling at the inhuman attractiveness of Captain John Hart.

"Does that mean I shouldn't tell him that I think Hart's responsible for the ongoing string of homicides in Splot?" Tosh asked.

Ianto stared at her. "Um, no," he finally go out. "No, you... wait, _what_?"

"Homicides. Jack brought it up, actually. Yesterday. I did some research. Six days ago, one person dies in Splot of a car crash, confirmed drunk driver. Next two days, nothing. Then, three days ago, _two _unexplained murders. The first we already know was Hart, but the second was drowned, autopsy placing time of death around 11:30 pm, by which time the rift had already reverted and Hart was gone—"

"Okay, hang on," Ianto interrupted "The rest of the team needs to hear this and you don't need to say it twice. But could you, ah, maybe not mention it to Jack for now? At least not the part about Hart? I just want to give him a bit of space for a little while."

"Sure, but do you really think he won't come to the conclusion himself?"

Ianto remembered how... _exhausted_ Jack had looked last night. "Yeah," he said. "I don't think it'll occur to him."

~~TW~~

Two hours later, Jack wasn't back but the rest of Torchwood was. Gwen gathered them around the meeting table. "Okay, shoot."

"Basically, the death rate in Splot among the young and healthy has quadrupled since the night Hart arrived," explained Tosh. "We've had reports of drowning, poisoning, strangling, knifing and one instance of someone beaten to death. No apparent correlations among victim, method, or situation. The police chalked them up as suicides, then as copycats, but it's pretty hard to say that someone _beat_ themselves to death."

"So this is what? A parting gift from John?" Owen asked, feet impudently propped up on the table. He was leaving scuff marks.

"We can only assume," Tosh responded.

"He left pretty abruptly," Gwen considered. "And I was with him the whole time. He'd of had to set it up before we even met him. Why would he do that?"

"Unless he's still here somehow," Ianto countered.

"So, basically, we don't know shit," Owen summed it up. "So what the hell are we supposed to do?"

"Investigate the murders. All of them." Gwen's mouth was set. "It's all we _can_ do. Maybe we'll find a connection."

"Or maybe we're just overreacting to a bunch of bastards who all decided to end their miserable existences at the same time," Owen muttered under his breath.

"Worst case scenario if we investigate, you're right and we waste a bit of our _valuable_ time. Worst case scenario if we don't, the _world ends_. Take your pick," Tosh offered. Owen glowered back at Tosh, but kept his mouth shut.

"One more thing." Ianto took a deep breath. "Let's not mention Hart to Jack just yet. Trust me on this." Gwen looked like she was itching to ask why, but she just nodded.

"Fine."

~~TW~~

It was raining, naturally. The water rolled in sheets off of the surrounding rooftops to douse the already soaking wet team. Torchwood stood with hunched shoulders and lowered heads, trying in vain to keep the water out of every orifice of their bodies. Gwen had suggested that they split into teams to cover more area, but Jack was adamant that they stay together. So four of them stood in a lopsided square around a corpse sprawled on the pavement.

Owen knelt to examine the body. It was male, mid-twenties. Its head had been smashed upon the pavement; blood and grayish matter mixed with water to run away from the body in rivulets. "Dead," Owen announced.

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Thank god," he commented dryly.

"Owen..." Jack warned.

The doctor obediently turned back to his hopeless patient. He reeled off observations in a bored tone: "Only wound is to the back of the head, looks like he died from blood loss. Dead four to eight hours. No other apparent bruising, so it wasn't a vehicle accident. It looks like someone just grabbed him, banged his head against the pavement, then went on their merry way."

"But who would kill someone that way?" Gwen interrupted. "It's hardly _efficient_."

"Because efficiency _is_ the primary concern of your typical murder," Owen interjected.

"No, she has a point." Jack knelt down to examine the body himself. "This was pretty violent. And as Owen said, it wasn't done with a car or any other large object. The murderer had to grab this man and beat his brains out with his bare hands. Most people, however violent, will shy away from that kind of immediacy."

"What could have distanced them, then?" asked Gwen.

"Drugs, desperation, insanity—"

"Well, that narrows the list of suspects," interrupted Owen.

"—but that's not my point. Contrary to popular belief, humans generally don't kill each other without a good reason. And this victim is clean as far as we can tell – no convictions, enemies, gang history... This really makes _no_ sense."

"Unless..." Ianto said slowly. "Unless the killer didn't actually want this victim dead. He just wanted to kill someone. Like... he enjoyed it."

"Yeah," said Jack in a suddenly strained voice. "Just like that."

Jack looked like he was somewhere _else_, Ianto noticed. Like there was a pane of glass separating him from the world outside his mind. That's how it had felt last night, when Jack had... frozen. What Ianto couldn't figure out was whether that other place was Jack's haven or his prison.

But a beat later the invisible divide dissolved, Jack bending down to place a comforting hand on Owen's shoulder. "We have what we need," he said gently as he pulled the doctor away from the corpse. "It's time to move on."

By the end of the day there were five bodies. Another was found that evening, and the police were instructed to report any subsequent deaths immediately to Torchwood. The most recent victim was an elderly woman, found crumpled on her kitchen floor by her visiting daughter. She died of a drug overdose. Skeptical of the apparent suicide, the team spent several fruitless hours scanning her house for any traces of rift energy that a visiting Time Agent might have shed. It was late into the night before they admitted defeat and scattered home.

Ianto rode back to the hub with Jack instead of catching a taxi to his own flat. The captain didn't comment, but he didn't enact any invisible panes of glass between them as they rode, either.

As Jack double-checked the lower level cells, Ianto changed into a pair of flannel pyjamas he'd bought weeks ago but somehow never ended up wearing. Either Jack was stalling for time today or he normally rushed through the nighttime checks when Ianto was there, because today they took nearly twice as long as normal.

Jack finally trudged into his quarters where Ianto waited. "Do you mind if we just sleep tonight?" he asked tiredly.

_He doesn't want me_ collided with _he wants something more than this, too_ in Ianto's mind unbidden, and he groaned. "Of course I don't mind." He closed his eyes and rolled over, feeling the bed dip as Jack slid in beside him.

Over an hour later, Ianto felt Jack interlace his own fingers with Ianto's limp ones. Jack must have thought he was asleep.

Ianto lay awake for a long time.

~~TW~~

"I am trying to investigate here!" Gwen's voice rang through the hub and Ianto cringed.

"Investigate what?" Jack challenged. "The woman committed suicide, remember?"

"I don't know! She might have, ah, acted suspiciously, gone around whispering suicidal thoughts out loud... Point is, this is what we do!"

"She was antisocial. Her daughter says she never left the house."

"Then if she _did_, it would mean something, wouldn't it? I'm just going to go ask around her neighbourhood, Jack, so what is your problem?"

"It's dangerous. People are _dying_, for god's sake, Gwen."

"People are always dying. But right now I'm not the one killing them and they'd have a hell of a time killing me-" she hefted her gun "-so I think we're good." Gwen's voice softened at the end. "This is my job, Jack."

He glared. "Fine. Take Owen with you," he finally conceded.

"I solemnly swear to be more hindrance than help!" Owen called cheerfully from the futon.

"Don't worry. I'll bring my gun," Gwen replied. "_Up_." Owen let her playfully bully him out the door.

The entire time Jack's fingers were tapping out a nervous tattoo on the arm of his chair. It started out as a random pattern but resolved into a strange and insidious double heartbeat. Ianto wondered where he had heard it before.

Tosh stood abruptly. "I need a muffin." She shot Ianto a sympathetic look as she left.

Jack didn't notice her leave. His tapping sped up until his fingers blurred and his eyes glazed over. His breathing was shallow and rushed, almost in time with the relentless tattoo.

"Jack?" Ianto tried hesitantly. The other man did not respond. He was buried and suffocating in that Other Place. "Jack!"

Jack flinched violently, upsetting his full coffee. Ianto retrieved the towel he kept handy under his desk for just such occasions and sopped up the mess as Jack held obligingly still.

Ianto tossed the damp towel into the corner to launder later, looked Jack straight in the eye, and said "Tell me what the fuck is going on with you."

Jack looked straight back blandly. "I work for an organisation called Torchwood. We fight aliens. Sometimes we make friends with—"

"Quit it with the bullshit." Ianto's immense store of patience was nearly depleted. He tried another tactic. "Just tell me what happened," he pleaded. "What's wrong, Jack? I can help you."

"I'm sorry. I know I – haven't been very – vigorous – lately, but if you need to me to I can—"

"You are not listening to me," Ianto replied mildly. "You need to learn to listen to other people better, or someday someone is going to punch you in the face, and it's probably going to me. Now. I don't give a _damn_ whether or not we fuck tonight. What I give a damn about is _you_. Isn't that ironic? I started this whole thing," he gestured loosely between them, "to protect Lisa but somewhere and somehow along the way it because the end itself. I don't know. I have absolutely _no clue_ how it happened but it has and now we deal with it."

That was not what he had planned to say, now or ever. But now the words were flowing out raw and he was probably screwed already so he kept going.

"I _care_ about _you_, whether you like it or not, and now something is wrong and I can't figure out what it is but _I can't stand to see you hurting_, Jack!"

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," Jack replied weakly.

"Well, you've got to!"

"Why?" Jack challenged.

"Because..." he cast about for something that would convince Jack. "Because, if you fall apart, then so does Torchwood."

"Torchwood? So all this is about the success of our _organisation_?" His voice turned acerbic on the final word.

"Maybe it is." Ianto honest to god didn't know anymore.

In that moment something intangible was lost between them. "Fine," Jack replied flatly. "You're right. Things happened to me during that year that never was. Things that I need to forget, but can't stop remembering."

"Maybe you don't have to forget them. Maybe you can just accept that they are now a part of you."

Jack glared at him. "What, are you a therapist now? How do _you_ know?"

Ianto stared right back. "Experience."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Jack's face crumpled. "I know," he whispered. "Everyone that I care about _hurts_, and I can't protect them."

"I don't need you to. That's my point."

"But you did need me." Jack folded in on himself, all traces of aggression gone. All traces of hope gone. "You _did_ need me to protect you. But I did everything he told me to do, and he still hurt you. Again and again and I was _useless_."

"Who did? When? When did this happen, Jack?"

The captain wouldn't look Ianto the eye, wouldn't respond to his frenzied questions. So Ianto stopped asking and instead wrapped his arms around Jack as tightly as he could.

Jack flinched away from the contact, and a word reflexively slipped from between his lips.

"_Master_."


	2. Smile So Completely Wearing that Mask

**Chapter Two: Smile So Completely Wearing That Mast**

* * *

Owen drove the SUV through the rain, Gwen silent beside him. He nervously ran his fingers along the steering wheel, noting a hole newly worn into the leather. "Okay, I need coffee. Now," he announced abruptly.

Gwen gave him her contagious gap-toothed grin. "I thought you'd never ask." Owen smiled back and veered sharply across two lanes to a cacophony of horns and screeching tires. "Owen!" she scolded. He only chuckled as he slid the SUV neatly into the Starbucks parking lot.

They walked in and ordered their coffees. Gwen twisted her engagement ring nervously around her finger as if she could screw it into her skin. Owen told himself that it was just a random tic, but he couldn't help watching as she worried the ring around and around, wringing her slender hands...

"Ordering together, right?" Owen's head snapped up. The student at the register looked pointedly from Gwen's ring to his wallet to their twin coffees.

"Ah, no. We're not. We're... uh..." Owen hated himself for stumbling. If it had been Gwen caught by surprise, he would've used it as ammunition for weeks.

"Fine. Separate. One seventy-five." The girl had already lost interest. Owen felt like an idiot. He paid her and stomped out to the SUV without waiting for Gwen to get her drink.

Gwen pulled her damp self into the vehicle a few minutes later. "You know, Owen, you could give people a break once and a while." She shoved her hands in front of the heating vent. "Y'know... me, Ianto, that girl back there, Jack... Just the people who you really need, the ones who make the coffee and shoot the aliens before they shoot you. Could be a tad helpful."

"How is this about Jack?"

"It's _not_ about Jack. Why is it about Jack?"

"_You_ mentioned him!" Owen noticed he was absently tearing at the steering wheel leather, and moved his finger away.

"Yeah, I also mentioned myself, Ianto, Starbucks girl, and I was talking about just about every person who's ever met you, actually!"

"Still, it's all Jack now, isn't it? He completely screws us over, comes back asking for our trust again, but _still_ he won't tell us shit, and it's all just 'oh, you poor wounded puppy!'"

"Jack is _not_ a wounded puppy."

"See? You always take his side!"

"Yeah, that's 'cause your side makes no fucking sense, Owen!"

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

~~TW~~

"Still dead," Owen pronounced, standing over the old woman's body.

"And still no residual rift energy." Gwen examined a little beepy device intently. "If she was killed by an alien, it hasn't come back to admire the damage."

Owen nodded grimly. "Let's go meet the neighbors."

The rain had abated, but they still pulled their collars up crossing the street. Owen rapped hard on the door facing the murder-slash-suicide house. It was opened by a small, nervous-looking woman with bug eyes and an enormous mouth.

Gwen smiled politely and held up a badge. "Police. May we come in?"

"You're here about the girl, then?"

Gwen exchanged a significant look with Owen. "Yes, we are. Can we please come in and talk to you?"

Inside, the couch was overstuffed and the building reeking of stale cigarettes. The woman immediately lit up. Her cheeks caved inward with each inhale, making her look a half a step away from cadavery. Owen winced and Gwen cleared her throat politely.

"She's run away, didn't she? Could tell she was a bad one, just looking at her. Clothes destroyed that way teenagers insist, abominable hair."

Owen opened his mouth, but Gwen hastily cut him off. "Yes, that's who we're here for. Can you tell us where you saw her?"

"It was last night, late, maybe eleven. I was up watching the telly and when I turned it off I heard footsteps outside and there was that girl, walking right down the center of the road all alone in the middle of the night, brash as you please. I reckoned if she was going to come to _my_ door asking for handouts, I was going to give her something to think about, but she didn't. She walked right up to the door of that house, over there she gestured vaguely in the direction of the street "-and went right on in. I assumed she belonged there."

"Easy enough lock to pick, no deadbolt," Owen whispered under his breath.

"But then, an hour later I hear a door slam and I reckoned I'd better check on it and there she is, running down the street with a grocery bag full of something she didn't have when she went in. The little thief!"

"Maybe she was Mrs.-," Gwen pretended to look up the name of the murdered woman in her notepad. "Mrs. Statson's granddaughter."

"Visiting at that time of night? I do not think so!" The woman's face was slowly turning red. "But make sure you write down that I had nothing to do with it. I wouldn't have let her in here if she'd begged! In fact, I was going to call the police and report it, but then I saw the patrol cars out front this morning and assumed someone beat me to it."

"Ma'am, did you know Mrs. Statson at all?"

"Oh, no. Not sure I want to, either, if she can't keep that kind of riffraff out."

"You never spoke to her? Passed her on the street?"

"Not once. Haven't seen her since the day she moved in, actually. She keeps to herself." The woman leaned in as she whispered conspiratorially. "I _heard_ that her husband died ten years ago, and the grief drove her mad. They say she hasn't spoken a word since."

Owen's patience for gossip was exhausted. He stood. "All right, thank you, that will be all." He started to leave.

"You catch that girl!" The woman called after them in between puffs of smoke.

Gwen leaned back in the room and gave her best policewoman smile. "Will do!" she reassured brightly. The woman nodded and sank back into her plume of airborne toxins.

Owen was surprised to find that it was dark outside. Night. The time of secrets and silence. Gwen seemed to be thinking the same thing. "I'm done," she said tiredly. "Let's pick this up tomorrow."

So Gwen went home to Rhys and Owen to emptiness.

~~TW~~

Ianto was buried in the archives, re-cataloguing things that had already been re-catalogued. Gwen had phoned an hour ago to let him know that she and Owen had not been ripped to shreds by the Mysterious Menace, nor had they found anything that couldn't wait until tomorrow to be dissected. They'd gone home. Tosh probably had too. Jack... Ianto sighed. He really had no idea.

But he was about to find out. Footsteps, muffled against the concrete stairs, approached from above. Jack never came down to the archives. He had a thing about memories. Yet here he came.

"Ianto. Knew I'd find you down here."

"Yes. Moving this ring from talismans to, ah, weaponry. Shocked Owen last time he used it."

"Yeah, well I don't think it was meant to go where he was putting it." The corner of Jack's mouth twitched. Ianto grinned back and started putting everything away. _Just is case. Don't want to break anything._

But Jack stopped him. "I'm sorry about earlier." Ianto's shoulders slumped with a sigh. _Couldn't Jack just let it go? Forget? _But then Ianto realized what he was asking. _Jack does not forget_. Jack continued. "I was just worried, but I overreacted. Getting a team member killed on your first day back looks bad on a résumé."

"That's fine, Jack. I understand," said Ianto evenly.

"Do you?" Jack searched his face. "Because I don't want you to worry and I don't want you to think that I can't be the leader and do the job because I can. I don't want you to doubt me."

"I don't doubt you." But Ianto didn't think that Jack could bring himself to believe him.

"Ianto?" The tone of Jack's voice shifted. Ianto looked up at him.

"Yeah?"

Jack was shifting his weight back and forth. "Do you mind... going to your flat tonight?"

The pit in Ianto's stomach threatened to swallow the rest of him. This was it. What he had been waiting for. It was inevitable, really... Jack had found someone else. Or had he? Ianto's face grew hot as a thought struck him. Was being with him really worse for Jack than being alone?

"Oh, no! You and I, I mean."

Ianto's traitorous emotions reversed in an instant, but he didn't let the relief carry him away. "Yeah," he answered cautiously. "Sure."

As Jack nodded and trudged back up the stairs Ianto realized he had no idea what exactly he was agreeing to.

~~TW~~

Ianto resolved to let Jack make the first move. Tired of trying to read minds, he reckoned it was time for Jack to let him know what he wanted. That was how they ended up sitting awkwardly at opposite ends of Ianto's kitchen table at one o'clock in the morning.

"Okay, what are we doing here?" Ianto finally asked, sighing. Then he cringed; that wasn't how he'd planned to broach the subject.

Jack seemed to sift through several possible responses before replying "I missed you," in a carefully neutral tone.

Ianto laughed out loud. The utter absurdity of the situation - him, Jack, him and Jack, the whole mess culminating in his tiny flat at one in the morning... He noticed a coffee stain at the base of the table leg. When had he gotten lax enough to miss a spill?

"No, it's true." Jack's voice grew earnest. "When I was gone, I was alone a lot, and when I wasn't alone, I sure wished I was." He winced. "But I kept thinking about you, and how I left you without saying anything-"

"You left _all_ of us, Jack." Ianto's hand clawed around the edge of the table. "Gwen and Tosh and Owen-"

"Yes, but _you_ were the one I couldn't forgive myself for! Don't you see? I was chasing after something, something so stupid and so meaningless, but it had been my life for so long that I didn't know how to stop searching or deal with the weight of what I was leaving behind."

"Yes, but you're done now!" Ianto was struggling not to punch him. "You're here, now, you've made your decision, and _the past is past_."

Jack shook his head softly. He walked to Ianto. "No, it's not," he whispered. "It can't ever be."

"How can you be so sure?"

Jack took a deep breath. "Because," he whispered. "I still remember everything. I still... _feel_... everything. And I am one hundred and forty-seven years old."

Ianto reeled back. "Damn."

"Yeah. Pretty much." Jack nodded. Ianto didn't know what else to say.

It was Jack who finally broke the silence. "Still," he said forcedly cheerfully. "You learn to appreciate the little things...like coffee. And windows."

"Windows?" Ianto responded numbly.

"Yeah. My quarters at the Hub are starting to feel a little too claustrophobic."

Ianto had the sinking feeling that he'd just gotten the best answer as to why Jack had wanted to spend the night at his flat that he'd gotten all night.

~~TW~~

Three hours later Jack jolted upright in bed. Ianto sighed and laboriously pulled himself up, propping himself up against the headboard. "What is it?" he asked tiredly.

Jack spun to face him, eyes wild. His movements were odd, jerky and intense. All vestiges of that wall Ianto had sensed earlier were gone, and Jack was all there, ready to go. He pushed Ianto over and climbed on top, his mouth hard and searching. Ianto felt all of the tension melt out of his limbs to be replaced by rightness and fire. He took control, switching their positions so that Jack was lying on his back. But as Ianto moved to climb onto him, the bed let off a loud creak and Jack froze.

"_He's coming_," Jack hissed underneath him. "_I can hear him coming. I can't stay here._"

"Who? Who's coming?" Ianto's 4-am brain wasn't cooperating.

"Doesn't matter." Jack retreated within himself, farther than Ianto had ever seen him go, until his eyes were glassy blank. "_I will find you, _Ianto Jones," he promised. "I wish I could tell you, I wish you _knew_... but I will find you and I will get you out of there."

"Out of where? I'm here! I'm _right here_, Jack."

But Jack slowly lay back down. "You seemed so real that time," he groaned as he closed is eyes.

"I _am_ real!" Ianto laughed in frustration. But Jack was already gone.

~~TW~~

The next morning Ianto again woke to an empty bed. By the time he arrived at the hub Jack was already there, thoroughly ensconced in paperwork. Ianto could see behind the files that Jack was actually messing with an ancient and bedraggled sci-fi paperback. Tosh was staring intently at a computer monitor, eyebrows drawn tightly together at a diagram that looked to Ianto like a wave breaking in reverse. Breaking in reverse over an upside-down camel. She exclaimed something about differential equations as he passed.

A whoosh sounded as the pressurized steam door rolled open and Gwen stepped through. Owen was nowhere to be seen.

Jack glanced up. "So, what did you find yesterday?"

"The deceased's neighbor, a Miss Angelica, says she saw a teenage girl enter the house at approximately eleven pm, then exit again around midnight. Estimated time of death was a few hours later, but it's worth checking into, I think. Miss Angelica claims to never have seen this girl, or anyone for that matter, going in or out of the house before.

The deceased was apparently antisocial. I propose next we contact the daughter-"

"And ask about any teenage relations," Jack finished. "I'll get right on it."

Gwen looked at him strangely. "I can take care of it. You scare people."

"Only when I'm bored. Tell Owen when he gets his skinny butt over here that if he's late again I'll have him chasing weevils for a week." Jack's tone brooked no discussion.

Ianto fetched Jack's coat as he belted on his gun holster. As he smoothed the greatcoat over Jack's shoulders, he asked quietly "Do you remember having any dreams last night?"

"No, why?" Jack's eyes were completely honest, but Ianto reminded himself that he was dealing with a skilled liar.

He couldn't start thinking like that.

"No reason, sir. Thought I heard you talking in your sleep, but I guess I was wrong." Jack nodded briskly and was gone.

Gwen sighed loudly and plopped down onto a chair next to Tosh. "So," she asked brightly. "Why are you looking at a picture of a camel?"

The call came in two hours later. It was PC Andy, and when Gwen got off the phone, she was worried. "There's been another death. Andy's sent me photos, but he said they're a bit gruesome," she warned. They crowded around her screen.

The victim was young, perhaps a college student, and was still in Jubilee uniform. Ianto cringed. That boy had delivered to Torchwood at least a dozen times, and now he was lying slashed open on the pavement. The cuts were shallow but numerous. Ianto counted fifteen, all over the chest and torso, individually nonlethal, but collectively – the boy would have bled out.

Tosh jerked away from the monitor. "I'll, ah, check the CCTV. Could you read the road names off for me?"

"Main and Luther," responded Ianto numbly. Gwen was back on the phone with Andy, extracting details and ordering him to remove the police from the crime scene. Ianto mentally debated calling Jack.

"Oh my god," Tosh gasped. The others crowded back around as she rewound the video. "This is forty three minutes ago." She pressed play with a tremulous finger. Pizza boy entered the frame. Halfway across, he abruptly jerked and fell over onto his back. As much as he struggled to right himself, he couldn't seem to claw his way back to his feet; he moved as if a heavy weight were pressing him down. Then as they watched, a rent formed in his uniform shirt and into his chest, right across his sternum. He threw his head back and screamed as the rent elongated, though they could hear no sound. Another cut started to form. It took him ten minutes to stop struggling.

"Tosh," Gwen began tersely. "Have you checked the CCTV of the other deaths?"

But Tosh was already pulling up the video. "This is the old woman's street," she explained as if buffered. "All of the other murders were in back alleys, but the girl that Miss Angelica described should appear." The video started at 10:58 pm and they watched for five minutes. At 11:01 there was a flicker of movement as Miss Angelica pulled back her curtain to glare disapprovingly at something in the street, but other than that there was nothing.

They were dealing with something invisible.

'Well" Gwen sighed, "That would be alien."

"Alien?" Ianto spun around to see Owen standing behind them, shoulders hunched sullenly. "What did I miss?"

Ianto called Jack as the team drove to the crime scene. He'd briefly toyed with the idea of hiding this latest murder from the unsteady man, but Tosh had pointed out that if Jack couldn't handle a stranger dying he could hardly be considered responsible for planetary security, and Ianto wasn't willing to go there yet. So he phoned Jack.

They arrived first, and set about their jobs automatically. Owen examined the body, Tosh measured residual rift energy, Gwen checked the scene for any clues too mundane for the rest to catch, and Ianto stood about awaiting further instruction. When he looked at the rest of the team out of the corner of his eye, it almost seemed like there was a translucent wall materialising out of this air to separate them.

He looked at it head on, and it dissolved. But it wasn't gone – he_ knew_ those walls, knew the barriers one put up to partition one's existence: consciousness from memory; present from past; other from self. He'd used them before, after Canary Wharf, during those first months, those first _years_ at Torchwood, when he'd known he could never trust these people and the soulless monster who led them. Where the fuck had that gone?

A car door slammed and Jack took long, purposeful strides to the corpse. "Talked to the daughter," he called as he neared. "Turns out you were right, Gwen. No teenage relatives, no visitors. She's certain the old woman didn't know the girl who-" He stopped suddenly, staring at the body. They waited. He didn't continue.

Ianto looked down at the corpse, then up at Jack, then down again, trying to figure out what about this mutilated form was so triggering. It was grotesque, yes, but so were many other things that were part of their daily lives. Gwen started rattling off details to fill the uncomfortable silence: "Alan Hoffman, age nineteen, killed 60-something minutes ago by an attacker that didn't show up on the CCTV, assumed alien, no known motive-"

"Pain." Jack interrupted.

"Ah, what?" Gwen looked uncomfortable.

"Pain. It looks like something just wanted to cause pain. Wanted to take life, because it could." He broke off abruptly. "How long did it take?"

"Wounds inflicted over the course of eight minutes, two more to bleed out," Owen recited numbly.

Jack nodded as if acknowledging that was in line with his personal experience. Then he shook his head sharply. "Well?" He asked the group at large. "Found anything at all?"

Gwen shook her head mutely, and Tosh spoke up. "No readings from anywhere in a half-mile radius." She looked perplexed. "Whatever this was, it wasn't itself alien, yet it still didn't show up on the CCTV. Humans aren't supposed to be invisible!"

"That really would make our lives difficult," Ianto agreed.

Bewildered, they drove back to the hub.

~~TW~~

Ianto could hear the sound of raised voices through the wall, but he didn't bother to join in. This was how Torchwood worked best: fury and violence and, more often than not, sex reverberated off of each other until all that was left was something productive and at least seemingly sane. Meanwhile, the process required coffee. Also, Chinese. Ianto decided to go pick it up himself.

When he got back, steaming take-out in tow, the rest of the team finally seemed subdued. He presented the feast and plopped down in a chair.

"You're a lifesaver, Ianto," Owen mumbled through a mouthful of noodles. Ianto smiled generously and inclined his head in response.

"So, what do we think is going on?" he asked.

"Well," Gwen dropped her chopsticks back into the half-full container of rice. "Whatever killed pizza boy hadn't physically traveled through the rift, but was altered in some way so as not to appear on the CCTV. So we're thinking alien possession or some kind of drug. The question is what exactly it does - does it make them invisible entirely, or just on camera? How'd whoever's using it get it? Thing is, we'd like to think this murder is connected to the last, but the neighbor saw our only suspect entering the house, so she clearly couldn't have been invisible."

"Unless," Ianto said slowly. "The alien tampering doesn't make the person invisible at all. CCTV cameras are digital, right? So maybe it's just tampering with the data."

"You know," Owen waved his chopsticks through the air. "That's actually pretty clever."

Tosh nodded. "But to do that they'd need tech that we haven't encountered so far, that certainly hasn't been invented anywhere on Earth..."

They continued long into the night, bandying ideas back and forth, but Ianto soon zoned out. Somehow, he was stuck back hours before, in that moment when Jack saw a dead body and recoiled in fear.

~~TW~~

Ianto had hoped for a quiet night, but he hadn't really expected it. Really, he was thankful that he got two full hours of sleep in before Jack woke him at 3:00 am. He flipped the light on with a resigned sigh. The Captain wasn't as lucid this time. He rolled back and forth, groaned, and spasmed, but he didn't speak. His eyes fluttered open occasionally, but he only stared unseeingly up at the ceiling.

Ianto briefly considered moving to the couch, then just as quickly regretted it. Who knows what the Captain had been through? The least he could do was try to help.

Helping, unfortunately, proved difficult. Ianto had read somewhere that you're supposed to let a dreaming person sleep, to allow them to face their nightmares and work through their fears. After five minutes of watching Jack in anguish, however, Ianto decided _fuck that_ and tried to wake him. Unfortunately, he couldn't. The best response he could get was when Jack weakly shoved him away without opening his eyes.

So Ianto leaned over the other man and tried to hold him still, so at least he wouldn't thrash so much, but Jack reacted even more violently to the restraint. He bucked and writhed and, when Ianto leaned all his weight onto him, threw Ianto off of the bed entirely and into a porcelain lamp, which promptly crashed to the ground and shattered. Ianto stood and brushed himself off, glaring at Jack's dark form.

"That was Lisa's," he informed him reproachfully, then exited as regally as he could in pyjamas to make a pot of tea. When he returned fifteen minutes later with renewed patience and a steaming cup of earl gray, Jack had settled back into a regular pattern of flinching away from imagined blows. Stepping carefully around the porcelain shards, Ianto eased onto the bed. He set his mug on the bedside table for safekeeping and leaned back against the headboard, examining Jack. He hoped this was normal. Was this how Jack always reacted to - things? Was this just some sort of temporary phase? He realized how very few nights they had actually spent together. Was this why Jack had preferred to be alone? Seemed like a pretty self-sacrificial reason to alienate oneself.

Ianto gingerly slipped his hand into Jack's slack fingers, testing the contact. Jack didn't pull away. This, apparently, was acceptable. Ianto wrapped his other hand around the mug, and brought the singing liquid pensively to his lips. The red numbers across the room blinked at him reproachfully: 3:27. He really did need sleep. People were dying, for God's sake. He again considered moving out the couch, where he could sleep undisturbed, but was instantly ashamed. He turned to Jack.

"Hey. So, ah, you really should get some sleep, sir." He felt idiotic, but he was desperate. "I mean, you are asleep, but, you know, _rest_. Which involves less dreaming. Please. For me?" He sighed ruefully. "You never did listen to anyone but yourself. Always had to be controlling everything..." he trailed off, realizing how little of a power struggle Jack had given Gwen. How easily he was allowing the present truce of sorts, where both were in charge. "Seems like you learned some humility, wherever you went. Probably learned it the hard way... What _are_ we doing here, Jack?" Ianto paused, and realized that Jack's breathing had become more even. He still occasionally caught his breath or let out a small groan, but he seemed calmer. Was it Ianto's voice? Anyway, he decided it was worth it to continue. "I mean, honestly? You've always been so secretive, and that's usually fine. I mean, we don't all need to know what you ate for breakfast every morning, but couldn't you just cut us some slack, cut _me_ some slack, just this once, and _tell me what's hurting you_?" He waited, but of course no answer was forthcoming.

"We did really miss you. Gwen did, and Tosh, and even Owen, more than they let on. And of course, so did I. But thing is... it wasn't the sex that I missed. It was _you_. You probably don't want to hear this. But I missed seeing you every day and smoothing your coat over your shoulders and knowing there was something I could to help someone, to do _something_. Everyone thought I was useless after Canary Wharf. Spoiled goods. And maybe I was. But you gave me a chance and I don't know if I've straightened out or if I ever will, but at least I've done something now. Something to distract from the memories, something to maybe begin to make up for what happened? I don't know. But thanks... I owe you for that. I guess, yeah."

He stopped again, realized that Jack had calmed. His breathing was slow and even and reassuring. Ianto carefully lowered himself to slide under the comforter.

"Good night, Jack," he whispered as he closed his eyes. His cold tea sat abandoned on the bedside table.

~~TW~~

Ianto didn't really sleep that night, and it showed the next day. He showed up to work uncharacteristically late, bleary-eyed, and dull. Gwen took one look at him and gave him a stack of paperwork that she insisted he sift through lying down on the futon. When he woke up four hours later, the hub was deserted.

Ianto groggily stood, sheepishly smoothing out the wrinkles in his suit. He hadn't even bothered to take his jacket off. He was not on top of things right now. At least Jack seemed closer to normal. Not counting the dreams. And the hallucinations. Okay, 'closer' was the operative word here.

Well, Jack seemed to have accepted the fact that he couldn't keep every member of the team out of danger all the time. They were out doing something dangerous right now. Probably. Ianto shook his head. _I really _am _out of it_.

~~TW~~

It was that night that finally settled things for Ianto. Jack woke at 1:37.

This time, when Jack tried to kiss him, Ianto kicked him off. "Where are you right now, sir?" He asked in a measured tone.

Jack took in his surroundings, then replied in a puzzled tone. "Your flat."

"No, where are you really?" Ianto pushed, searching to unravel Jack's dream.

Jack sighed. "Does it matter? Can't I just be here?" His voice cracked on the last syllable.

"Who is it that you're afraid of?" When Jack shook his head, Ianto pushed. "I've been watching you, I know there's someone, something. Why don't you want to-" Ianto stumbled over encouraging the delusion "-wake up?"

Jack's fingers clawed into fists and he pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the headboard. He rocked back and forth slightly and gritted his teeth. "Even you, now," he whispered, almost too quiet for Ianto to hear. "He can't let me forget, he can't let me have a moment's rest, he _can't even let me have this_."

Ianto tried a different tactic. He shook his head firmly. "I'm right here. I really am. You're - you're not dreaming, sir." He reached for Jack's hand and interlaced their fingers. "See? I'm real."

He wasn't prepared for the reaction. Jack recoiled in horror. "_No_," he hissed. "No, god _damn it_! You can't be here, I don't want you here! _I thought you were hidden_!"

"You. Are. _Awake_! In Wales…Cardiff! My flat!" Ianto threw his head back in frustration. "_This_ is what's real, the other, _that_ was the dream! Why can't you see?"

Jack's eyes grew wide and he started shaking his head, over and over and over. Ianto couldn't tell if he was rejecting the information or the entire situation. Jack whispered, slowly, "Is this a trick?"

"No, Jack. No, it's not."

Jack shook his head again. Two poles of consciousness were tearing apart in his eyes. "I-" he swallowed hard. "I don't know what to believe." His eyes widened in horror. "I honestly don't. Am I going mad, Ianto?"

Ianto slowly shook his head, pent-up tears finally streaming down his face. "I don't know," he whispered.

Ianto woke the next morning after a fitful 90 minutes of sleep to the requisite empty bed.

But this time, it was not just the bed that was missing items. The entire flat had been stripped of Jack's belongings. His coat, his toothbrush, that little worn paperback he'd taken to carrying around with him and dropping by the bed at night – they were all absent. Ianto groaned and beat his head against the headboard. Jack clearly hadn't "forgotten" his dreams again last night, and a Jack whose pride was injured was not a pleasant one to deal with.

Or maybe Jack left because he didn't want Ianto mixed up with his demons.

But no. It was a nice thought, sure, but it hinged on the assumption that Jack cared deeply about Ianto's emotional well-being. _If he does, he sure has a fucked-up way of showing it._ Ianto glanced at the lamp, the lamp that was lying shattered on the floor because Jack had _thrown_ him against it, the lamp that used to belong to Lisa. His girlfriend. The one that Jack had_ murdered_.

_Nope. Not going there._ He'd agonized over Lisa for months, and he made a choice: not to forgive, exactly, but to follow his own advice to Jack and move on. He'd seen all too clearly watching Owen what could happen to someone stuck on a single moment in their life. The doctor had said something to Ianto once, when he was desperate and alone and on the brink, about a girl named Katie whom he had loved and failed to save. To hear Owen tell it, Jack had walked all over that grievance too-

_No._ They were all fucked up, Torchwood, every single one of them. _At least Jack has the most valid excuse for inhumanity_. You had to get past that, you had to accept that if there was a hell they would all see each other there, and then resume the struggle to do the best you could with what you had.

And that's what Ianto was going to do. He was going to use whatever he had left in him to do the best by Jack that he could.


	3. Pick the Filthy Lock You Made Yourself

**Chapter Three: Pick This Filthy Lock You Made Yourself**

* * *

Well, Jack Harkness wasn't going to make it easy. When Ianto finally dragged himself to work, Jack greeted him coolly and turned his back. Gwen looked at Ianto questioningly. Ianto just sighed and rolled his eyes. It was all very grade-school.

_Oh well_. The first step, he decided, was figuring out what exactly had happened to Jack to provoke this juvenile display. And since Jack had already made it crystal clear he wasn't going to give Ianto any help in that department, for the time being it didn't really matter if Jack was talking to him anyway. So Ianto approached Tosh.

"Hey," he said cautiously, conscious that he hadn't really initiated contact with her in a while.

She looked up, surprised. "Oh, hello!" she said uncharacteristically brightly.

Ianto sat down beside her gingerly. "So," he edged in. "I was wondering if you could take a look at the rift activity from when Jack came back... any residues clinging to him... ah, just- anything that might help us figure out where he went."

"Oh." Her face fell. "More Jack, is it?" Ianto wasn't quite sure why she was upset or how best to respond, so he just nodded. She groaned. "Really, Ianto, don't you think you're being a bit obsessive?"

"Obsessive?" His throat tightened and he seemed stuck on one-word answers.

"Yes, obsessive. Obsessed with Jack. When's the last time we had a conversation that wasn't about him? Honestly, even when we're around you, it feels like you're in a different world."

_Behind a pane of glass_. Ianto sat up straighter. _No. _ "I'm... sorry," he stumbled. "I'm not-" There wasn't really any way to finish that sentence. He wasn't what? Normal? Okay? Neither of those things existed in their world.

Tosh's gaze softened. "I'm not angry," she reassured. "Just worried. We don't want to lose you, too." Ianto nodded, slowly. _Too._ Tosh turned back to her monitor. "Still," she said. "I'll check up on that. Wouldn't hurt anyone to get some answers. In the meantime, I suggest you 'refresh'" - she said the word with implied quotation marks - "your memory about the case. Just so you don't embarrass yourself."

Ianto took the proffered papers gratefully. They turned out to be a record of what had transpired in the murder cases since he'd tuned out. They'd found a suspect. He realized with a jolt that Tosh must have prepared this ahead of time for him.

"Thanks, Tosh."

But she was already engrossed in the whirling data on the monitor.

~~TW~~

The girl who'd entered the murdered woman's home an estimated three hours before the time of death had been identified as 19-year-old Hilary Macnamee. Graduated from high school with an A-B average, one minor shoplifting conviction in her junior year, never made it to college. Torchwood hadn't approached her yet, but they were planning to. Specifically, they wanted to test their hypothesis that the murderer was a human somehow altered to not show up on digital media.

Jack still wasn't at the hub. Ianto decided he'd give him until the evening to show his face and then he'd start worrying. Otherwise, Ianto would play along and act like everything was normal. So when Gwen announced she and Owen were going to pay a visit to the Macnamee household, Ianto volunteered to come along.

"You want to come?" Gwen repeated, slightly dazed.

Ianto nodded, eyebrow quirked quizzically.

A big grin spread across Gwen's face. "Well, get in the SUV, then."

Owen had a similar reaction when he slouched into the SUV to discover Ianto in the back seat. "Rejoined the human race, Jones?" he quipped as he revved up the engine. Ianto rolled his eyes, but he was wondering: had he really been that isolated? Since Jack had gotten back, his thoughts had all been for, well, Jack. He felt the strangest sensation sitting there in the back seat of the Torchwood SUV, which he realized he had not occupied for several days. It was like - a loosening of all of his muscles, a relaxing in his diaphragm. His jaw, too. He realized he'd been gritting his teeth, and consciously stopped. He tried out a smile. It was pleasant.

Until Owen turned on the radio, filling the vehicle with angsty jaw-shattering vibration.

_So far I've come, now look at me_

_So far so good, man what a joke  
_

Ianto and Gwen groaned as one, then shared a small smile.

_I live, you die, you're the lucky one_

_Sorry for my bewilderment_

Owen beat his palm against the steering wheel in time with the music. Ianto winced. But the next lyrics caught his attention:

_You cross into the other place_

_At last, it's come, now I'm on my own_

_Sliding downhill, face to the ground_

_So near the end and bitter truth_

Damn right.

_Did you find a promise broken_

_Did you find a burning well_

_In the pit I left your stomach_

_With blistered itch and rancid smell_

_Do I sing with shallow meaning_

_When I sing for you alone_

_When I scream and spit ferocious to the sky_

_Then who's it for_

By the time they pulled up outside the flat, Ianto was bobbing his head in time to the song.

~~TW~~

The girl was surly but did not appear homicidal, the mother was concerned but not overly so, and there was no use at all for the weaponry that Owen had hopefully stashed in the SUV.

Gwen explained that they were police investigating potential gang movement in the area. She supplied some filler questions, then she withdrew and Owen moved forward in a well-synchronized movement to ask if it was okay if they spoke to the mother alone for a few minutes. She nodded approval and Ianto, who had been twiddling with his phone as the others spoke, snapped a quick photo of the girl as she left. Then he slipped the phone into his pocket to check later.

With Hilary gone her mother appeared noticeably more flustered. Gwen smiled kindly. "As you've probably guessed, we'd like to ask you a few questions about your daughter." The mother's eyes widened and Ianto realized how they must look, three strangers in form fitting black all arrayed neatly in the poor woman's living room. Gwen must have realized the same thing, and her voice softened even more. "We don't think your daughter is involved," she reassured. "We just wanted to ask a few questions about her friends, see if any of them could be possible gang associates."

The woman looked relieved. "Good," she said. "Hilary is a good girl. She'd never be involved in something like that."

Gwen nodded. "Of course." Then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, she asked "Do you mind if we look at her last high school yearbook? Just to see if we recognize any of her classmates?"

The woman nodded, eager to please, and fetched the book. It opened automatically to Hilary's class picture. "That's her." She pointed unnecessarily; Hilary's beaming smile stood off the page. Even though she had a similar hairstyle and clothes, the younger girl's expression made her look very different from the Hilary that they had just seen. Gwen made a show of examining the other faces in the photo, then sighed and handed it back.

"No, there's no one there we're suspicious of. But," Gwen hesitated. "If you don't mind, my asking, Hilary looks so happy there. Is she normally outgoing?"

"Yes, very!" A grin spread across the mother's face. "We're actually very close, she and I. Since her father left-" She broke off with a sigh. "But, yes. Happy, talkative, normal. I knew she'd never hang out with someone who'd be in a gang." She pointedly returned the conversation to its original topic, effectively trapping Gwen.

"Yes. Thank you." Gwen looked helplessly at the rest of the team. She couldn't say anything else implicating the girl.

Ianto cleared his throat and spoke up. "Ah, ma'am, is there any chance that someone could be harassing your daughter? Even if they weren't someone she'd choose to hang out with, they could be bothering her... Have you noticed any changes in her mood or behavior recently?"

The woman looked at him for a moment, seemingly weighing responses, then relented. "Honestly, yes. She's been... quiet. Not really angry, or depressed, just withdrawn. She's hardly spoken to me for several days now. Is there anything I can do?" she asked helplessly.

"No, but don't worry," Ianto reassured. "If anyone's bothering her, we'll take care of them soon." He hoped it was true. "Please do let us know if anything changes develop, though." He slipped her a scrap of paper with his mobile number as he stood. They politely extricated themselves and thanked the woman for her time.

As soon as they were back in the SUV, Owen spoke up. "Jade Holland, Sara Piper, Kevin Jonathon. Write it down."

"What?"

"Those are the names of Hilary's mates. She was standing near them in the yearbook photo." He grinned. "Made myself useful." Gwen nodded approvingly, and jotted all three names down in her notebook.

Hilary did not appear in Ianto's cell phone snapshot.

She was still in her yearbook photo, confirming the theory that the tampering occurred as the picture was being taken. Photos taken before the alteration wouldn't be affected. So it was what - some kind of defense system?

Back at the hub, they parted to look up the other names Owen had memorized. But Tosh caught Ianto's sleeve as he passed her. He looked at her quizzically.

"I just wanted to let you know that I've looked, but I haven't found anything yet," she said softly. "There's no surge in rift energy at all from the time Jack disappeared. We don't know exactly when he came back, but everything seems to have been normal in that general time frame too."

_Oh. That_. Something sunk back down in Ianto's chest. "Is there anything that wouldn't require rift energy at all, or that would subtract it?" He sighed.

"No, I don't think..." Tosh's eyes unfocused. "Unless it was something designed to travel _through_... But we've never seen a species old enough to have developed that technology..."

Ianto left her to her musings and with a heavy heart went off to google Kevin Jonathon. First link that appeared: newspaper article detailing a charity he'd created that had ultimately donated 2,000 pounds to the local homeless shelter. It was accompanied by a large photo of a young man, presumably Jonathon, graciously accepting a community service award. The photograph was dated yesterday. This boy had nothing to do with the murders. Ianto hoped Gwen and Owen were having more luck.

Jack was back that evening, dragging a few sedated weevils like a cat dragging home mice. He tossed them in the cells and came back up, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction.

"Good hunting today, sir?" Ianto asked mildly.

Jack nodded. "These two were getting a bit too close to the primary school. How did... things today... go?" He looked around awkwardly, and Ianto realized they were alone in the room.

Ianto smiled and nodded. "Quite well, sir." He looked at the clock in the corner of the computer screen. "Well, it looks like I'm done for the night. See you tomorrow."

He stole an involuntary glance at Jack as he turned to go. He didn't mean to look back. He certainly didn't mean to see the untidy row of half-moon cuts that marred the tender skin where Jack's sleeve slipped up over his wrist.

Ianto left.

~~TW~~

"Ianto, cut left. Owen, right. I'll go down the center. It should be trapped." Jack's terse voice came over the comm. Ianto nodded reflexively, though he knew Jack couldn't see him, and pressed his back up against the cold stone wall.

"One, two, three..." He mouthed the words along with Jack's whispered count, then on three spun out from behind the wall, gun barrel immediately fixated on the trapped hoix. Owen and Jack were both in position, and they advanced in unison, forcing the alien to retreat against a 6-metre brick wall.

Jack stole a quick glance to either side at Owen and Ianto. "Ready?" he asked carefully. Ianto nodded and slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, coming out with a dark chocolate bar, already unwrapped. He snapped off a piece and tossed it at the alien. It clattered to the pavement. The Hoix froze and examined the chocolate for a moment, as if wary it might explode, then crept forward. The three allowed it to eat the chocolate piece unmolested. Ianto tossed another, this time closer to Owen, and the Hoix slunk forward. He continued this pattern, leaving a trail of chocolate leading right past Owen. Jack stood back several meters, gun trained on the alien, ready to fire if need be.

The Hoix was almost there. One step, then another... Owen lunged, plunging a syringe full of all-species sedative straight into the tender spot at the base of its skull. The Hoix sank to the ground in an almost graceful movement, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Look," Owen nudged the unconscious alien with his foot. "It's your mother, Ianto. You must have gotten her looks." A grin twitched at the edge of Jack's lips, but Ianto didn't dignify the jab with a response.

"Jack," Gwen's voice buzzed with static over their earpieces. "Coming your way. She's halfway down Hope street, with a blue jumper and blond hair." They broke into an easy lope to make it to the SUV as Gwen continued to give details. "Now she's crossing Main... I can't get close enough her to get a picture though. She's noticed me."

"But she's _not_ going to notice an SUV with blacked-out windows following her down the street," Ianto noted.

"All you need is a photo," Gwen cautioned. "Don't scare the poor girl, just drive past and point a cell phone at her."

Jack revved up the engine. "We're on it, Gwen."

Ianto snapped the photograph as they drove past. The camera did not record Jade Holland's image.

~~TW~~

"Owen, run a scan on the Hoix. See if you can identify what's making it hyperactive. Tosh, check the area, make sure the abnormal readings have disappeared. Gwen, what have we got on our invisible killer suspects?" Jack's voice was confident and authoritative. Ianto realized that he was now seeing the Jack that everyone else saw.

"Piper and Jonathon show up on film, but Jade Holland and Hilary Macnamee do not. Those are our only suspects so far," Gwen reported.

"There's been another death." Tosh interrupted. "They're increasing in frequency. This one looks like a suicide, too."

"Speaking of which," Owen said. "How exactly are we saying that a teenage girl is responsible for an old woman's suicide? Do we think she threatened her? With what?"

"I don't know," Jack answered, sighing in frustration. "We need to talk to one of the kids. They have answers and they'll give them... I just don't like to interrogate anyone based on the minuscule evidence we have."

"'Hello there ma'am. It's come to our attention that you haven't been showing up on photographs recently, so we're here to arrest you for murder,'" Owen parodied. Tosh laughed, but stopped quickly when no one else did.

"Exactly," Jack agreed. "We need something more. We need some evidence of alien contact, or at least rift energy. You didn't pick up any at their flat?"

"None," Ianto responded.

"Well, whatever it is, it's spreading." Tosh's tone was grim. "The murderers are becoming more violent, or more people are getting involved. I don't know how far it's going to go, but we have to do something soon."

Owen broke the tone. "Dinner time," he announced. "I'm thinking pizza." Jack shook his head in mock disappointment, but Ianto saw the smallest hint of a smile tingeing the corners of his mouth.

"Yes, pizza would be nice," Tosh agreed.

"Jubilee, I assume?" Ianto said.

They all turned to look at him in surprise. "You're joining us?" Tosh asked.

Ianto felt his face grow red. "Yeah," he said, trying to pass off a light tone. Gwen tossed a reflexive glance at Jack, but Ianto pointedly avoided looking in that direction. "I think I will," he repeated.

Gwen recovered quickly. "Fabulous. This calls for celebration. I vote we actually sit down in the restaurant instead of eating carryout over our computers!"

"Sound's good to me."

As they left, Ianto allowed himself one subtle glance in Jack's direction. He'd meant it to be brief, but Jack happened to be looking at him and they accidentally locked eye contact. Ianto broke it after a beat and stared straight ahead, a resolute smile planted on his face.

"By the way, Ianto, I just remembered," said Tosh around a mouthful of vegetarian delight. "I did find some suspicious rift activity around the time Jack left." Ianto looked around nervously at the others, unsure if he would lose any of their new found camaraderie for discussing that here, but none of them seemed to care. Tosh continued. "I didn't find it before because it wasn't what I was looking for," she explained. "There was actually a _negative_ level of rift activity at the moment before Gwen found Jack gone. I've never seen anything like it. The rift dropped below zero."

"Is that even possible?" asked Ianto.

"Apparently so. Is there anything else you want me to check on?"

Ianto considered it for a long beat. Then he shook his head. "No," he finally replied. "Thanks Tosh, but I think I'm good."

"Good." She smiled as Gwen offered them all more pizza.

~~TW~~

When Ianto arrived at the hub early the next morning, Jack was already up, looking like he had had a rough and sleepless night. They looked at each other for a moment, Ianto taking in Jack's ruffled look, the bags under his eyes and the hard set to his mouth. Jack stared back at him warily, as if preparing himself to face more probing and pretending. Neither man inhaled. Then Ianto set his shoulders back. "A little untidy here, sir," he said, gesturing on his own head to where Jack's hair stood up in back.

Jack plastered on a convincing smile. "I don't know..." He examined himself in a black computer screen. "I kinda like it. Gives me a sexy 'just rolled out of bed and didn't bother to brush my hair' look. What do you think?"

"It _is _irresistible." Ianto conceded. Then he left to go polish a wedding ring and an old key.

~~TW~~

Ianto's mobile rang.

He stared at it as if it had suddenly sprouted wings. Jack had that number. Rhiannon had that number, though she hadn't used it since their father died. But no one else had it. So who the hell was calling him? He gingerly picked up the phone. 'UNKNOWN CALLER,' the screen informed him.

"Hello?" he answered carefully.

"Is this Torchwood?" The speaker was female.

"Ah, yes?"

"I'm Sandra? You came over to my house to ask me questions about my daughter, Hilary, a few days ago." Her voice was reproachful.

"Oh yes, hello." Ianto wanted to smack himself. He now clearly remembered slipping her his number. "How may I help you? Has something happened?"

"No. Well, yes. I..." She sighed loudly. "I know that this doesn't make any sense, okay? But neither does how Hilary's been acting lately, or the very idea of her being involved in something that she shouldn't be... I'm sorry, this is probably unrelated, but there wasn't anyone else I could call."

"I understand," Ianto reassured her. He did.

There was a long pause, as if she were gathering up her courage to say something. Then: "I can't take a picture of Hilary." She stopped, as if waiting for Ianto to denounce her as mad and slam down the phone, but since he just listened quietly she continued. I first noticed it yesterday. When I looked at the picture of her that I'd just taken she didn't appear on the camera. It just showed the background, like she wasn't even there. So I tried again. Same thing. Then I looked back over older photos, and I noticed the same thing in every one. Her brother is there, I'm there, but she isn't in a single photo. How is that even possible?"

"When did this start?"

"Five days ago. The night before, she appeared on the camera normally. That was also the day she started acting so... quiet. Do you think something happened to her?"

"I'm sure she's fine," Ianto lied. Then he thanked the worried mother, hung up the phone, and unclenched his fist to reveal a row of tiny half-moon cuts all along his palm.

"Here we go," he whispered.

The thing was, he now had proof that at least one suspect had stopped appearing in photographs on the exact date that the murders started, and that John Hart left. It was a pretty strong link to the time agent, and they couldn't continue to avoid investigating it. But their only connection to Hart was Jack himself, and the team's link to Jack right now was through Ianto, and Ianto didn't feel up to examining that link in the current state of affairs.

Honestly, Ianto cringed every time he thought about Jack at all. He was trying not to_. If only I weren't so damn empathetic. If only I could care about someone without needing to feel their pain or, even better, not need to care about anyone at all. Then I would be fine. I could survive the ruin of Torchwood._ But that wasn't who he was. And if he weren't like that, he probably wouldn't even be here. _Where would I have ended up,_ he wondered,_ if I hadn't been so broken and alone after Canary Wharf? After Lisa?_

He'd needed Torchwood then, needed it like a drug that was killing him softly but that he would die without. So he'd taken Torchwood Three as a substitute for Torchwood One and made it his own and now here he was, cringing away from talking to his own leader.

~~TW~~

Luckily, Ianto was offered a suitable excuse for not broaching the subject with Jack that night. That was as far as the luck went.

Around 10:00, Jack stormed into the hub. He usually walked in silence these days, as if trying to deny his own existence, so when he stomped through the rotating door he got the attention of every member of the Torchwood team.

"I was just attacked," he announced huffily. "By a group of _kids_."

"Shit," contributed Owen.

"Where?" asked Tosh, already pulling up the CCTV.

Jack tersely described his location and the appearances of the attackers. Gwen compared his descriptions to her notes as he spoke, then nodded grimly. "That's Jade Holland. The others I don't recognize, but it sounds like it's spreading pretty quickly. We have to assume that there will be new attackers all the time."

"Got it," Tosh announced, and pressed Play.

They all watched in silence as the strange scene unfolded on the screen. Jack walked into the frame, noticing something that none of them could see. His face was turned away but Ianto could imagine his expression merging from curious to warning to pissed as the kids pulled out knives or whatever it was they were carrying. The next part was the strangest as Jack started deflecting invisible blows. A rent appeared in the sleeve of coat and he and punched at someone, hard. Ianto grinned. You didn't mess with Jack's coat.

After only a few seconds, the Captain pulled out his gun and swept it around, finger clear of the trigger. It had the desired effect, as the invisible blows seemed to stop.

"They all ran," Jack confirmed. "Now, I would really like to know why a bunch of _kids_ are _attacking_ people. They seemed nothing but human."

"Gangs _have_ been known to pick fights," Owen observed.

"Yeah, but do I look like a target to you?" Jack retorted. "They were... fearless. That was what was so strange. I hardly look like I'd be easy pickings, but they didn't seem to care. I could have _killed_ them. They didn't even look afraid when they ran away. Just... disappointed. It's like they wanted nothing more than to fight me. I've seen aliens like that, aliens that thrive on others' pain, but not humans. We aren't built that way."

"Aren't we?" Ianto's voice was quiet, but everyone heard it. "I've known people like that before. They want to hurt people who are weaker to prove that they are strong. But everyone I've known who has ever been that violent was terrified, somewhere on the inside. They were out of control, horrified at themselves but unable to deal with it except by continually proving how _strong_ they were. So they let it consume them and took it out on those around them who couldn't escape."

After that speech, everyone looked away from him except for Gwen. "I'm sorry, Ianto," she said softly.

He shook his head at her, refusing her sympathy. "I don't want that. I just want to know how it is that these kids have managed to avoid feeling that conflict."

_And how I can escape it myself._

_~~TW~~_

The next day, Jack bustled around the hub, teased them all, and directed the team efforts without a hint of subtext on his face. He and Ianto caught eyes once. Jack winked.

It was absurd, considering all of the death and destruction that were going on, but Ianto was starting to feel _good_ in a way that he hadn't for a long time. It seemed like things were almost back to normal, normal being qualified as "normal for Torchwood". Ah, the good old days, when his biggest problem each morning was the hungry weevil chasing him to work... Ianto stared off into space, a slight smile on his face.

It was his conversation with Jack that afternoon that clinched it.

Ianto approached cautiously and tried to ease into the subject, but Jack just looked at him with all of his old discerning bluntness. "Spit it out."

So Ianto did. "We think Captain John Hart is involved with all of these murders. A kind of... parting gift. They started the day he left. And he has a vendetta."

"I thought of that. It's pretty obvious." Jack's tone was nonchalant.

"You did?" Ianto's mind raced.

"Yeah. It's not him, though." Jack must have sensed Ianto's doubt because he continued. "Not his style. John would want the world to know, would want _me_ to know, if he was the one screwing us over. The real culprit is hiding."

"So... who do you think it is? Someone else you've pissed off?"

Jack paused for a second; seemingly warring with himself over something, then shook his head sharply. "No. Can't be. This is just... random. Bad timing." He sighed, and returned to his work. Ianto thought he heard a whispered "He's _dead_," but he convinced himself he must have imagined it.

"So—what do you think is going on?"

Jack sat back and examined his interlaced fingers. "I was a time traveler, once," he said. "I learned a few things. One is that when you mess with time, no matter how careful you are, there are consequences. And of course the rift amplifies that. So something that normally wouldn't be a big deal, like a day reverting to the night before, when stationed right on the rift, functions as a large time event. Anything could have come through."

"So... instead of the normal, occasional detritus that floats through we could have got something more... intentional? Malevolent?"

Jack nodded. "Precisely."

"That's not good."

"No," agreed Jack. "It's not."

But on the inside, Ianto was silently rejoicing. That was the first normal conversation they'd had since Jack left. He wondered if he could now push it to something more.

Ianto stayed late that evening.

At ten o'clock he eased into Jack's office and waited, silently, for acknowledgement.

"Yes?" asked Jack absently.

This did not count as acknowledgement. Ianto waited until the other man had dragged his attention out of the void and proffered it all to him on a platter.

With a quirk of his eyebrow, Ianto graciously accepted.

A twitch started at the left corner of Jack's mouth and expanded into a full-on, eye-crinkling grin. "Come here," he ordered sternly, wrestling the smile into a momentarily severe expression that quickly lost the battle and gave way to honest joy again.

A hope swelled inside of Ianto at the light in those eyes until he could not contain it and he didn't want to. "God, I missed you Jack," he moaned as they came together to form one. Ianto found he was crying, but Jack was too and he didn't really care because for once he was overwhelmed by something good and he was so tired of battling his own mind for control.

As they fumbled down to Jack's quarters, he slid his hands inside Jack's coat and over his shoulders, separating the material from the man with exaggerated tenderness. Jack shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground in a heap. Ianto winced against the other man's ear when he accidentally stepped on the precious coat, but for once Jack seemed to have priorities above his clothing. He bent forward, deliberately bending Ianto over backward onto the bed –

Ianto's phone rang, obnoxiously loud in the darkened room.

He laughed, embarrassed, and fished it out of his pocket to turn it off. Then he realized that Jack Harkness had gone rigid on top of him.

"Jack?" The man was dead weight. "_Jack_?"

Harkness moaned and rolled off of him, and Ianto gratefully gasped in air.

"Jack!" He shot up and fumbled a light on, all the while frantically searching Jack with his eyes for any wounds. The man was clean.

But Jack's eyes were tracking movements that didn't exist in the present reality. They were flitting back and forth wildly and glaring and flinching and defying in that way that very few people can with just their eyes. It was a skill largely limited to Shakespearean actors and highly trained con men. He seemed to be watching something horrific played out on the opposite wall. Ianto even turned to look but of course there was nothing there.

"Where did you get that ring tone?" Jack's lips barely moved.

"What? I don't know," replied Ianto, utterly bewildered. "I've had it for months! I don't know."

He silently replayed the tone in his mind. It _was _unlike him to change the phone from its factory settings, but it was hardly uncharacteristic enough to merit a reaction like this. Something about the tone had appealed to him, though. It was offbeat, peripheral and frenzied, like a heart racing at double speed. Life driven to the brink of possibility.

But there wasn't anything particularly _upsetting_ about it.

"_When_ did you get it?" Jack demanded.

"It is a _ringtone_, Jack."

"Yes, but where-"

"_What the fuck is going on, Jack?_" Ianto nearly screamed.

The captain began to haul himself up off of the floor bit by bit, each movement a separate struggle. Ianto watched in slow motion as he carefully rearranged each of his features into that fucking neutral expression that Ianto was going to bludgeon if he had to look at it one more time.

So the tea boy grabbed his captain under the armpits and dragged him off of the floor himself. "Sit down." He kicked Jack's chair over and shoved him down into it. "Now breathe." He got down face-to-face to ensure that Jack was, in fact, breathing as ordered. "Now," he continued, "take a deep breath and tell me why it is that a ringtone makes you so upset.

Jack glared back at him defiantly. "I'm fine."

"You were lying broken on the floor and I am tired of it. So what. The hell. Was that?"

"It reminded me of something," Jack grudgingly replied.

Ianto laughed and shook his head. "Oh, you're going to have to do better than that."

"I don't want to." Jack looked him square in the eye then. "I don't want to remember that. I can't talk about it."

"And you're so worried about 'hurting' me! You know what hurts, Jack? Watching someone that you love – yes, _love_ – falling apart in front of you and realizing that they don't even trust you enough to admit it! I swear, Jack, one of these days I am going to bloody _kill_ you."

"I can fix it myself!" Jack's voice was as shrill as a child's.

"Oh come _on_, we both know that's not working. I hear you when you're talking in your sleep, you know. You are terrified, absolutely _terrified_, and you can't escape it. I can't even wake you up! And then even when you're here, you're really not – your eyes are glazed over and you're stuck somewhere else, remembering something that none of us can touch. Am I wrong?"

When Jack finally answered his voice was hoarse. "You're not wrong."

"So talk about it. Tell me."

"I can't..." He looked away but this time he wasn't leaving the present. He was just trying to avoid Ianto's desperate gaze. "I can't tell _you_," he finally whispered.

It felt like a physical blow. Ianto stumbled back slightly as if he'd been struck and his breath hitched in his throat but he was in control now and he wasn't going to let that weakness show so he waited until his voice was clear before replying: "Fine. Then tell Tosh. Owen. Tell _Gwen_ for all I care. Don't let this be about us, Jack. It's about you."

"It _is_ us. The whole fucking thing is _us_! You know where I would be if it weren't for _us_ right now? Probably still back on that motherfucking ship, being _tortured_, because I was too damn weak to fight my way out. And by then _us_ wouldn't even exist anymore, because you would be dead and I would be glad because death is the best thing that can happen to you in that place!"

"_What_ place?"

"You do not want to know."

"I do, actually."

"No. I'm sorry I told you that much. I can't seem to—my control is—broken. Useless. _No_," he repeated. "I am the leader. I am the one who survives anything. If I'm not that, then I am nothing, and nothing is—I _can't_—never again. God, I can't survive that again. Except I _would_—don't you see?" he cried.

"Yeah. It's okay." Ianto was suddenly furious. At the world for bringing a curse like Jack's into existence. At himself for being incapable of offering more than a transparent 'it's okay' and a kiss to alleviate his suffering. But he had nothing else, so he kept repeating it. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

The words were lost on Jack. He was present now, fully, and racing. His breath was so rapid Ianto wondered how he got any oxygen at all, and his hands curled reflexively, fingernails fitting neatly into the row of petite half moon grooves running along his palm.

Then it stopped.

Jack relaxed. His gaze focused. His breathing steadied. His eyes turned cold. The con man was in control once again.

"You're one to preach about secrets, Ianto Jones," he said in a measured tone. "You're the one who smuggled an enemy agent into our own base. You betrayed the entire organisation."

_That's it_.

"See Jack, this is what drives me _fucking insane_. When there's the chance – just the slightest chance – that someone might find out one of your valuable little secrets or actually form some close relationship with you, you roll out the razor wire." He knew that he was giving Jack exactly what he wanted, but the thought only made him angrier. "You expect everyone to be discouraged and run away, but even if they don't it's okay because they will slice themselves to smithereens before they can reach you. But I thought we passed that long ago, you and I. Because this is not a battle I want to spend my life fighting."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"See, this is why you're all alone."

Jack's top lip curled upward in a snarl. "There are things you don't know, Jones."

"Precisely."

"You do not know what you are dealing with."

Ianto laughed. "Is that a _threat_?"

Jack stood and pointed a rigid arm out the door. "Go."

"Fine. You have everything you wanted now."

Ianto Jones left.


	4. Bleed Your Possession Out

**Chapter Four: Bleed Your Possession Out**

* * *

Jack Harkness dreamt. He dreamt of heat and humidity, of omnipresent pain, of giving up hope to a depth that he never had before. He dreamt of watching dully as Gwen suffocated in front of him. He dreamt of dangling by excruciating wrists, head lolling limply on his chest as the Master tore him apart from the inside, helpless as the planet he'd sworn to protect burned and the man that he had sworn it for looked on, deaf to his screams.

-TW-

Distinctions between sleep and consciousness were fading. Both states were invaded by an endless reel of memories. When he was asleep, there was no hope of distraction. When he was awake, he couldn't comfort himself by calling the images dreams.

So when Jack's eyes cracked open, he couldn't immediately tell whether the stained concrete surface in from of him was the ceiling of his quarters in the hub, or the wall of his prison on the Valiant. It was the silence that gave it away. On the Valiant there had always been sound, the hiss of steam, the groan of enormous engines. It'd been so loud in his cell that he had sometimes wondered if the whole ship wasn't going to just break apart and topple out of the sky.

He had so fervently wished for that to happen.

The worst part, though, was that instant of not knowing. Even Jack's mind, which at times had been all that he had left, hadn't escaped the ordeal unscathed. He'd always prided himself on being cold and rational. Even on the Valiant, he had made his choices based on reason. He'd used every tool at his disposal, sacrificing his body from the start to protect his team, sacrificing his team themselves when he realized that it was their only chance to stop the decimation. It was strange, but of all that had happened – or, rather, hadn't happened – during the year that never was, his team's sacrifice was what Jack was least ashamed of. It had come down to a burden that he had to bear. He knew that none of them would forgive him, nor would he forgive himself, for putting their lives above the fate of the planet. And there was no future otherwise; the hell they were living in was close to his own. Death was the only escape he could give them.

No one could do the same for him.

But even that ultimate sacrifice hadn't been enough. He'd had to wield his final weapon: his own powerlessness. He eventually had to submit completely and allow himself to be humiliated at the Master's whim, just to mollify the timelord. To distract the torturer for a moment so that a more deserving victim could rest. To suffer the consequences of the others' failed escape attempts for them so that they wouldn't be discouraged from plotting more. To stop the monster from hunting down every miserable human being Jack had ever spoken to and mutilating them in front of him. He had allowed himself to lose all control.

Captain Jack Harkness had broken.

-TW-

It was Sunday.

Ianto was not even remotely religious. There were no alien emergencies. Every surface in his flat was spotless. So there was absolutely nothing for him to do with his day. With nothing comes thought, and Ianto was getting pretty fed up with that, so he called his teammates ad proposed a drink.

Gwen said she couldn't make it. She sounded distracted, and Ianto wondered how she was doing with Rhys these days. He hoped vaguely that she wasn't tearing that relationship on Owen. From what little he'd seen of them, she and Rhys were good together. Plus, no relationship deserved to be ruined over Harper.

So it was Owen and Tosh that he met at the hotel bar. Owen insisted on the location. Something about "avoiding places with frequent turnover" because "Welshmen in vests are chick-repellent".

Ianto had been naively hoping for a relaxing evening, but as soon as he got there he realized that wasn't going to happen. Owen was moody and Tosh was tense. She was also dressed far too nicely for the occasion. Tastefully, though – he approved. Owen, however, was completely oblivious and since it was no doubt Owen for whom she had put so much effort into her wardrobe, the situation was a bit awkward.

He tried to subtly draw Owen's attention to Tosh's attractiveness but it was to no avail. "There's no use trying to convince us you're not queer. We all know you'd rather she was wearing a military coat, so bugger off." This was not actually the case, but it effectively communicated Owen's attitude. Ianto took the hint.

Tosh filled in the silence for a while, blathering on about anything and everything. It was when she started in on the nature programme that she apparently watched on the telly last night that Owen informed her that he had had enough. He did it in a very emphatic way. She shut up.

This left three lonely adults sitting in a row at a hotel bar, occupying their attention on not making eye contact with each other.

_So this is what Torchwood has come to_.

Owen ordered yet another drink and accidentally sloshed half of it onto Tosh. "Sorry honey," he slurred as he tried to mop it up. Tosh stood and pulled away sharply, struggling to hide her flushed face. With one last disgusted look at Owen she turned and marched out the door.

Owen glared at Ianto expectantly, all traces of inebriation gone. Ianto remained resolutely seated. "Fuck you, Harper."

Owen shrugged. "Thanks for the offer, but I _do_ have standards." He calmly ordered another drink, probably expecting Ianto to fume off.

Instead, Ianto silently drank another himself. There was some perverse determination in him to remain next to Owen Harper for every bit as long as Owen didn't want him there.

Forty-three minutes passed before Owen spoke again. "I'm not going to start sobbing my soul out all over the counter so you can put it back together, if that's what you're waiting for."

That had happened once, just over a month ago. Owen had gotten _very_ drunk at a party, Ianto had appointed himself Unwanted Designated Driver, and Owen had actually let some of his secrets go. The next morning, he had very rudely informed Ianto that the very fact that they had ever spoken about something non-work-related was never going to go anywhere. Ianto had dutifully kept the secret.

On this night none of the potential acerbic responses appealed to him. Instead he tried answering honestly. "I can't see why anyone would want something like that."

"Well I was assuming you'd want to fuck afterward." Owen's tone stayed mocking, but Ianto didn't rise to the bait. He was not going to go there.

"I don't actually appreciate the emotional support always falling to me, you know. _You're _the doctor. Isn't it your job to put people back together?"

"Yeah, but I'm bollocks at it," Owen mumbled into his drink.

"Never know 'till you try."

"I don't want to try. I've too much shit going on in my own life to give a fuck about anyone else."

"And that would be why you decided to be a doctor?"

Owen flipped him off.

They sat in silence for another twenty-seven minutes, then went home in separate cabs to empty apartments.

-TW-

Jack sat in his study with the door closed, but he was listening intently. He couldn't make out full sentences, just snatches: "-and then she said that-" "-hardly think he expected-" "-now that is some serious-".

Ianto's laugh.

Other, slightly more pleasurable, memories flitted across Jack's vision. He felt the overwhelming urge to stand up tall, walk over to Ianto, and drag him back in here by the collar of his suit jacket. He wondered if Ianto would want that, or if the other man was happier now that he was cut free. Then Jack forced the thoughts out of his mind.

_It's what I wanted_, he reminded himself sternly. _He'll get over it – if he hasn't already – and he'll be all the better for it. I will _not_ drag him down with me._

_What might have been_ was now a forbidden subject, along with _what could have been_ and _what was_. Jack wasn't back on the Valiant, he was here, and no matter how invasive the memories could be he _would_ control his own mind. It would not go where he did not want it to.

And he did not want to think about Ianto, about how it would feel to finally let himself go and tell someone else everything. To lay himself bare and share his burden for once.

But he had already done that. He had already let everything go, laid all that he was and could ever be for another person to pick through and judge and do as they please with. That was not a pain that he could forget. Nor, he expected, could he willingly allow another person to have that power over him ever again. _I'm ruined_, he thought.

Ianto laughed again at Gwen's imitation of the weevil's face. "And then," she gasped around her own laughter. "I had to tell Rhys that I cut it on a broken window, because he said if I told him 'I was breaking up a bar fight' one more time, he'd have to start one himself to get my attention."

Owen grinned. He'd apparently worked off his pissed-off-ness at Ianto last night. He and Tosh had started some kind of contest. They took turns trying to catch nuts the other threw in their mouths, and laughing their faces off every time one missed.

"So, what did you do without me last night?" Gwen asked conversationally.

Tosh and Owen stopped their game and looked down, apparently reluctant to admit their immaturity. Ianto took up the slack. "Just had a few drinks, then went home. Nothing of interest."

"Ah." Gwen went back to her story, Tosh and Owen to their game, and Ianto to discreetly staring holes in the closed door to Jack's office.

-TW-

The dreams that night were targeted directly at the inch of weakness Jack had exposed earlier in the day. As the memories began, he was chained in the familiar position, face pressed into the bed, wrists wrenched up to the head board. In agony, though alive for the moment. He was naked, the Master was there, and blood stained the mattress.

But it was what was next that was always worse.

The shower, after he choked or bled away and woke to blissful solitude. Those few moments were the only time that he was ever alone and unencumbered. The rest of the time he had someone to perform for: Francine and Tish, the guards who patrolled past his strained body, the cameras he was sure the Master had set up in his cell so he could catch every minute of the action.

Jack was a skilled performer, a con artist, but performing was hard without an audience. So in those few minutes alone in the shower he stopped acting strong, stopped his desperate flirting, stopped even the tears he occasionally let flow. He just lowered himself down, wrapped his arms around his knees, and closed his eyes as the water relentlessly pounded him.

That first day in the Master's bedroom was the day that he stopped dreaming of rescue. He didn't want to look any of his team members in the eye after that. He didn't think he could. When he finally woke, he exchanged his sleeping nightmares for waking ones.

-TW-

Ianto was so far down, he couldn't hear even the low moans of the weevils above. He could only clean the base level of the hub so many times - Owen had spilled his coffee all over the futon with a wink that was either conspiratorial or derisive. Ianto had had a good go scrubbing all of it out of the upholstery - but that could only fill up so much time. There was so much time.

There were days like this at Torchwood, more often than one would think. There were no explosions, no plots, no aliens.

But even when there were, it wasn't like Ianto was ever strictly needed. He just tagged along.

And if Ianto Jones was struggling to fill up his days with fighting aliens and doing chores and sleeping, then _how the fuck_ did Harkness manage? How could he stay sane every day, getting up each morning to face an eternity that didn't change? If Ianto were to imagine a hell, that would be how he'd describe it. Given enough time, you must become so damn _bored _that agony and glee and monotony must become indistinguishable.

Ianto wondered if there were any other people like Harkness out there. Perhaps in that shelter Jack kept for the refugees of the rift, people too damaged by fluctuations in time to ever re-assimilate into humanity. Jack had told him about it. Those people were horrific, insane... Jack had shuddered violently at the thought. Ianto had wondered at the time, if they were that lost, wouldn't it be better if they were dead? Wouldn't they prefer oblivion to life?

It had been a dark time in his own life.

_But still_, Ianto had to wonder. _Is_ _that what Jack is doomed to become?_

_-TW-_

Jack was stuck, just as surely as he'd been during The Year That Never Was. He was paralyzed between two stained walls. The only difference was that now it was of his own volition. It was his own apathy, instead of chains, that held him there. And it was his own mental weakness, instead of his captor's relentlessness, that kept his mind from escaping the prison.

Jack had learned a lot of things in his lifetime. He'd learned that he might be weak, he might be useless, he might be a fucking _coward_ who would do anything to escape for just a moment, but he'd learned that he could never be destroyed.

It was no more than a rote function of his existence. There was no higher power, no higher meaning, no _reason _for the hell he was put through. He'd hoped that the Doctor would deny that, would reveal some special purpose that he had been waiting for centuries to give to the man who couldn't die. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the Doctor had informed Jack that he was wrong, that he was a freak, that he didn't belong anywhere. _And I already figured that out for myself_.

Yes, he'd survived things that people weren't supposed to be able to survive. But that didn't make him a hero. It made him a broken man tied to a chair.

It wasn't a choice for him, living. That ultimate freedom was taken away, and he had to combat the loss of control by dominating everything else. He learned to control his mind, his sanity, his resilience. His body always came back, but sometimes his mind needed extra _encouragement_. So he'd taught himself to fight back. He'd spent his entire fucking life fighting.

_And for the longest time I didn't even know why. __But now_... what Ianto said was wrong. _I'm not alone._

Tosh. _Beautiful Toshiko_. She was one of the strongest people he'd ever known. Whatever he needed, she built it, broke it, hacked it, analyzed it. Even after the tragedy with her mother, she moved on and kept working.

Owen, too. Jack knew what he'd been through, knew what it felt like to watch someone that you love fade away right in front of you, and be absolutely powerless to stop it. But Owen hadn't given up after; the agony had only made him stronger. He refused to give up searching for the American captain in the coat, even after all of his coworkers had condemned him as insane. It was that resilience that had prompted Jack to recruit him. Not only did it mean that he'd be more likely to survive Torchwood; it meant that he deserved it. He deserved the distraction, the chance to help. Jack couldn't help every broken person around him, but he could help Owen Harper.

Ianto, too, had come to Torchwood Three in pieces. And not only had he made himself whole, but he'd pulled the rest of them back together, too. _Ianto Jones_. Ianto had been the only one that Jack had really opened up to. Jack had told him things, things about his past, things that he had done, and Ianto had understood. He had accepted Jack for what he was. The acceptance that was so far beyond Gwen's blind faith had touched the captain.

_They all came back, too_. Tosh, Owen, and Ianto had all come to Torchwood weak and defeated and damn near broken but they had refused to give up through sheer force of will. Jack determined he would do the same._ They deserve no less._

_-TW-_

The call was memorable to Ianto because it was Tosh who picked up the phone. Gwen was out and Owen was sulking, so the petite woman dragged her eyes away from her monitor to answer.

"Hello?" Ianto watched her eyes light up, even as her voice lowered in sympathy. When she set the receiver down, her face was ablaze.

"We've got a chemical specimen," she announced proudly. "One of the parents we've talked to found it in her son's bedroom. It's a yellowish powder, too dark to be coke, though that's what she thought it was at first. She wants us to check it out. I'm downloading her address now."

Owen nodded curtly and grabbed his coat. Tosh looked at Ianto questioningly and he sighed. _Never strictly needed_.

"Coming," he informed her curtly, then followed Owen out to the SUV.

The mother was more ticked than worried.

"I knew he'd been doing something," she announced as soon as they were inside her door. "I just couldn't tell what. But this isn't anything I've seen before." She was ragged and prematurely aged, with cartoonish bags under her eyes. Ianto could believe her drug experience was extensive.

The powder was in a small mason jar, nearly empty. The mother assured them she had searched the entire house and that they were holding the entirety of her son's stash.

Owen set up tests on the drug as soon as they made it back to the hub, as many as he could with the minuscule sample size. He looked at some dry under a microscope, dissolved some in water and heated it, even analyzed the air surrounding the sample. Most of them would take a while to run, he warned them. He planned to leave it all up overnight. "So nobody touch it," he growled.

"There goes my after-work party," Ianto deadpanned. He seized the opportunity to scrub the dried food crud off of Owen's computer console.

-TW-

Once the rest of the team had left for the night, Jack decided it was time to work his way out of his prison. He started with the physical part: his cell. So he stood up and walked resolutely out of the hub and into the night.

Already he felt a difference. The Cardiff air was cool and windy, a far cry from the blistering humidity he'd been conditioned to dread. As he walked the streets, with no particular direction in mind, he started to feel a slight sense of release. He was going to do this. There was no going back now.

Jack Harkness had never stopped fighting during that year that never happened. He'd wielded everything he'd had, weapons he didn't even know he possessed. It was only when he made it out that he stopped fighting. Maybe because it was the goals become so much more amorphous... they had morphed from refusing to give the Master the benefit of a scream to trying to hold himself together indefinitely. And the indistinguishable reality and dreams made holding himself together so much more difficult.

_I should have expected it, though_. He had spent as much of the past year as he possibly could delving into memories or outright fantasies. It was his only escape, so he had perfected it to an art. _How could I expect the skill to disappear as soon as I don't need it?_ Besides, that timeline had reverted, leaving only six people on the planet for whom that year had happened. There were essentially two separate realities now. Who could blame him for getting a little mixed up?

_But it doesn't work like that._ The world wasn't fair, and what was being asked of him wasn't reasonable, but it needed to be done and he would do it. For his team. As he walked the secret streets of his city in the dead lonely hours of early morning, Captain Jack Harkness resolved that he would find a way to keep fighting.

-TW-

"Ha, _ha_!" Owen crowed.

Ianto looked up, preemptively alarmed, to see Owen waltzing with a test tube. _Oh_ _shit_. It was one of those days.

"It is _radioactive_!" he announced proudly, waving the test tube filled with the slightest bit of yellow powder about. He was using his index finger as the stopper. Ianto wondered absently if the powder was explosive.

"Should you really be holding it like that, then?" Tosh asked mildly.

Owen laughed derisively. "It's not normal radiation, like what comes out of a nuclear power plant. It can't even be absorbed through the epidermis. I'd have to swallow it to be in any danger and I don't plan to."

They waited. Owen grinned smugly. Finally Tosh gave in. "So tell us," she said. "Why would a bunch of human beings deliberately expose themselves to radiation? And why doesn't it kill them?"

"Oh, it _might_. Eventually. But that's okay, because by then they'll have passed it on to others and it just keeps _growing_." Owen grinned evilly. "Genius, really. A manufactured alien epidemic. You see, this isn't a substance anyone on earth knows how to make. The radiation in this," he shook the vial and Ianto winced. "Is _targeted_. We humans haven't figured out how to do that yet, that's why when you get chemo all your hair falls out. To attack the sick cells we have to attack the healthy ones too. But this _doesn't_."

"So what does it target?"

"Now see, that was the tricky part. But I, ah, figured it out."

"You'd better not have experimented on a weevil," Ianto warned.

"Nope. Mouse. I have a quadruped-only animal testing policy."

"You selfless creature."

"Do you want to know where it's targeted or not?" Ianto shut up. "Thought so. It is targeted on the amygdala. The emotional center of the brain. And it works fast. Those kids would start to feel numb within hours. And the numbness would stay as long as they were taking it... Imagine that. Imagine not having to feel _anything_."

Ianto shuddered. "Imagine living like that and then having your emotions come back."

"As long as they were taking it?" Tosh cut in, all business. "So what happens if they stop?"

"Eventually the damage would be permanent, and the drug wouldn't ever wear off, but to start with... Their feelings would come back. With less intensity after a while but still, after having felt that emptiness. . . It would be _quite_ a shock."

Tosh's voice grew low with worry. "How long is 'eventually'?" she asked.

Just as Owen opened his mouth to answer the phone rang, clanging and loud. Ianto could discern no difference in the tone yet he had a strong sense of foreboding. Owen seemed to move all too slowly as he reached out a hand to pick up the receiver.

"Hello?" A faint buzzing as someone spoke on the other end. Owen responded slowly and clearly. "Are you alright?... Don't worry, we can-... Are you sure?" Then finally, "I understand. I'll speak to you tomorrow." He set down the phone gingerly, then turned to face Tosh. "'Eventually' is apparently not very long. And I was right about the shock."

He sat down heavily, and Ianto suspected the call had taken more out of him than he had shown on his face.

They extracted the story bit by bit. It had been the mother who'd called, the one who'd confiscated her son's drug supply and turned it over to Torchwood. The woman had grounded her son and then locked him in his room to reinforce the punishment. The boy had responded by knocking down his door.

_I was right_, Ianto thought ruefully. _The return to emotion must be pretty agonizing._ He had a small amount of sympathy for the boy; he could imagine all too well how desperate he must have felt, locked away as the emotion flooded back into the corners of his mind.

_That would have burned_.

However, Ianto didn't think that he would ever have gone so far as to knock down his bedroom door, punch his own mother, then escape onto the street in order to hunt down a supply of some shady drug from an unknown supplier.

The mother had asked Torchwood to wait twenty four hours before searching for the boy. She was sure her son would 'come to his senses' and come home. Knowing how the drug worked, Owen highly doubted it, but there had been nothing that he could say to change her mind. It was ultimately her choice.

So they had to wait an agonizing twenty four hours, hoping that the boy didn't hurt anyone or get hurt himself as he roamed the streets. Hoping he didn't return, or that if he did his mother would have the sense to stay out of his way and not give him an excuse for violence.

They had all suspected that the drug had something to do with numbing emotion; that wasn't really a surprise. But now Ianto wondered if it did more than that. _If you can't feel anything at all, then what do you live for? _And why were the druggies so violent? It made sense that they'd kill without hesitation if someone was standing in the way of their goals, but there didn't actually seem to be any goals.

_Except killing itself_.

-TW-

The pool was closed for the evening. Jack had to break in. He was a very bad boy.

But he could have hardly done this during the day, with an audience. _An audience_. He shuddered. There had been an audience, albeit unwilling, the last time he had been put through this.

The water was cold. That was important; that was part of it. It was the reaction to the sense memory that he needed to overcome. The pool was entirely still; that, too, was important. The one detail that he changed was his clothing: instead of being naked, he walked into the water fully clothed in even his coat. The thing was monstrously heavy when wet, but he wasn't quite ready to face this without it.

The pool only went up to five feet, so once he had waded to the deep end he began to slowly bend his legs to mimic water rising. The goal was to be able to completely submerge his face, and then come back up. He was doing well until the water reached his neck. Then he reflexively strained his chin upwards, trying desperately to keep his nose and mouth above water even as he continued to bend his legs. It was like the two parts of his body were controlled separately.

Different wavelengths, different worlds.

He continued to crouch until his mouth then, agonizingly, his nose slipped under. He could feel himself shaking. But it was when his wide eyes submerged that he lost it. Even with the chlorine sting to remind him of the pool, he was back on the bridge of the Valiant in that fucking glass tank, with everyone he was fighting for forced to watch as the Master exerted his considerable will.

Jack lost control over his body then, and resorted to what had become automatic reflex to him on the Valiant: he inhaled. He pumped the water in over his lungs and then out again, knowing that this was the quickest way to drown. He forced himself into death to escape, rejoicing as the blackness finally overtook him.

When Jack woke, he gasped in water, but quickly found his footing and got his face into the air. That, too, was practiced. The Master had always allowed some air into the tank as Jack hung, unconscious, so Jack wouldn't miss any of the fun. Reliving those experiences was one of the most painful things Jack had ever done. But he wasn't going to give up.

So he began to crouch again. And then again. By the end of the day, he could bear to submerge his entire face for seven seconds before needing to claw his way to the surface.

-TW-

Jack started by gathering supplies – his pallet, a few knickknacks – and dragging them all up the stairs to the top floor of the hub. When he got there, he surveyed the space: dense foliage and light. The area was still technically underground, so it couldn't get any direct sunlight, but back in the sixties he'd rigged up a system of mirrors and lenses that channeled natural light from above into the submerged greenhouse eight hours a day. Even at night there was the softest glow of reflected starlight.

He'd been so proud of his inventiveness back then; the greenhouse had been his project. He'd billed it as a place to cultivate rare and alien flora, but deep down he'd just wanted some decoration to ground the hub. _Isn't that ironic: an underground base that needs "grounding"._ He'd picked out most of the plants and meticulously watered them himself. It was only in recent years that others had taken over caring for them, primarily Owen and Ianto, though god knows never at the same time. Jack couldn't suppress a smile at the thought of those two happening upon each other in the maze of green, watering cans in hand.

That was the only problem with his otherwise flawless plan to relocate his quarters: other people sometimes came up here. At least in the lower levels he was alone. He sighed. He'd grapple with that later. _Right now, I have work to do_.

He spent hours lifting and rearranging pots until the already cramped arrangement was as compact as it could be. He'd cleared a small area in the far corner, with roughly enough space for his pallet and a foot of clearance on either side. He began to unload supplies.

First was the book. Sci-fi, torn cover, cheap adventure. It had been a present from Elizabeth, intended as a joke. "To brighten up your boring life," she'd said. That had been before she'd found out the full truth of it, discovered she was married to a century-old man and fled with infant Alice. Jack gingerly set the book down.

The next item was a scrap of paper, a false identification that he'd used on Torchwood business somewhere around the turn of the last century. It reminded him of 19th-century Torchwood Three.

It reminded him of Alice and Emily.

He gritted his teeth. Those weren't good memories, exactly, but they were the first time he could recall really taking a strong moral stand against something. He'd been revolted by their violence and cruelty. Of course, his disgust for them _had _been kickstarted when they tortured him as a means of hello, and then conscripted him into interminable service. But, even before then, he had objected to senseless murder and racial supremacy on moral grounds.

The last thing that he drew out was a doll.

It was over a century old, but he'd carefully preserved it over the decades. It had belonged to Estelle.

He remembered clearly the night she had given it to him, because he'd known by that point that he'd never be able to see her again. Their relationship had gone too deep already; any deeper and he'd be endangering her and setting himself up for misery. But as far as she knew, it was just the last night before he went on an eight-month deployment.

"Here," she'd whispered, pressing it into his palm as they rocked on the swinging chair under the arbor in the moist spring air. "This is for you. So that you remember me always."

A few decades earlier he would have laughed to see the child's doll, already missing an eye, being given as a romantic present among adults. But back then he hadn't lost so many people, or lived for so long. He hadn't understood how much a silly little object could mean when you knew that you could never see the person it belonged to again. So instead of laughing he'd pulled her closer and whispered into her hair. "Thank you." That night had ended all too soon, then that war and that century and then even Estelle's life, but here he still was. At least he could say that he hadn't forgotten. And the memory of Estelle lived on, helping him even now to fight his demons.

"Thank you," he whispered to the doll. "Thank you."

-TW-

Ianto idly bit at a brittle fingernail as he watched the patterns of reflection and shadow that meant that someone was moving around in the greenhouse. Gwen, Owen, and Tosh sat doing basically the same thing as they watched the clock tick. It had been Owen, strangely enough, that had insisted they honor the mother's wishes and wait the full 24 hours before searching for her son. But now it was getting to be time.

Jack came down, a pensive look on his face that morphed into an honest-to-god grin as he saw his team all sitting together. He took a look at the clock. "I think it's time to head out," he said.

-TW-

"All I'm saying is, you are speeding and there are children." Gwen glared at Owen. He dropped his speed by four miles per hour and flipped her the finger. Tosh laughed and Jack shook his head in mock disappointment.

"Careful or I might have to start doubting your driving abilities, Owen," Jack warned as the SUV careened around a corner.

"That was a stop sign." Ianto observed dryly.

"Didn't your Mum ever teach you to stay out of the street? If Johnny can't follow _simple_ directions then he has it coming to him."

"Simple directions like 'microwave for one minute only'?" asked Tosh innocently.

"It looked like a seven," Owen growled. But he slowed down another hair.

Ianto still felt uncomfortable as they rocketed through the suburban neighbourhood and screeched to a stop outside the flat. But when they stepped out of the van as one, adjusting their four black jackets and one blue overcoat as they prepared to investigate a possible alien incursion, even Ianto Jones had to admit that he felt pretty damn badass.

The mother let them in with a worried expression. None of them had to ask to know that her son hadn't made it home.

A lightening-fast game of nose goes left Ianto as the one who had to start out the actual talking. He swallowed, suddenly conscious of the sweat beading on the back of his neck. He pulled at the collar of his button-down. It was far too hot in the flat. The rest of the team settled down, occupying all of the furniture in the tiny living area. He took a deep breath and looked around the room, stalling for time. Owen looked bored. Tosh looked distracted. Gwen looked upset. Jack was staring him right in the eye, waiting.

"We think that your son is involved in something alien."

A dead silence swept across the room. The team glared reproachfully at him and he winced. _That wasn't the way to start_. But there was nothing for it now but to forge on.

"You don't have to believe me about that," he assured her. "It's your choice. The reason I'm telling you is that I want you to understand... the thing in your son's body is not necessarily your son right now. We have reason to believe that he has been mentally altered in some way." The mother's eyes widened; and Ianto tried to sooth her. "We can save him." _I think._ "I just want you to understand that, whatever terrible things your son might do right now, he wouldn't necessarily do in real life. He wouldn't hurt you. But just now, he might not have a choice." It wasn't exactly the truth, but it was the version of it best suited to this conversation. _Hopefully._

The woman was still processing. Her lips moved minutely as the mouthed words to herself. Ianto supposed he had expected her confusion, hoped for it even. Perhaps if she felt too overloaded she would just accept the simplest understanding of the situation: it was going to be alright and the team arrayed before her were the experts that would make it so.

Eventually she nodded. "Okay," she mumbled.

Owen snorted sharply. When Ianto looked up to glare a warning at him, he caught sight of Jack. The other man was still staring at Ianto, but the corners of his eyes were crinkled up in a secret smile. There was something strange about the expression, but Ianto couldn't put his finger on what it could be just then.

"We are going to find your son," he told the woman firmly. "Anything that you could do to help us would be much appreciated. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

The woman shook her head.

"Pardon me for asking, but is his father living anywhere nearby?"

The woman shook her head again, mutely.

"What about friends? Does he have any who live alone, or whose families would let him stay with them?"

She flicked her eyes up, then down again, in a parody of a head shake. Then she sighed. "I was supposed to watch out for them. Their mother and I were friends. But she died. Cancer. As she was going, she asked me to watch out for her boys. Make sure they grew up right, and I promised I would, but they were already out of school, and there wasn't anything I could actually do when they decided that they didn't want to be looked out for."

"Can you tell us their address?"

"166 Lorner Street. She died four year ago."

"I'm sorry for your loss, ma'am." It was Owen who spoke. "But you did all that you could for her sons. There are some people that you just can't save. I'll let myself out now." He left. After a beat, the rest of the team followed.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the address, since Owen now insisted on driving at exactly the speed limit, which antagonized everyone even more than when he was speeding. They tumbled out of the SUV a disgruntled and stun gun-armed bunch.

The apartment was ground level, ideal for any of several possible violent scenarios that none of them wanted to voice. Owen and Jack elected to go in, since an entire crew of black-clad adults would be beyond suspicious to the kids. Ianto reckoned that anyone forcing entry into your home with a gun and a period military ensemble was going to be suspicious, but there weren't many other options.

He and Tosh pressed themselves up against the brick on either side of the doorway, hands on their weapons just in case these 'friends' were alien, drugged, aggressive, or otherwise dangerous. Gwen waited in the SUV with the engine running, again just in case.

Everyone held their breath as Jack rapped on the door four times, sharply. It creaked open to reveal a very tattooed young male sporting a wife beater tank and black sweatpants. A device in Tosh's pocket started beeping furiously, and she pulled it out to reveal comically flashing lights.

"Jack," she hissed. "It's them!"

Six minutes later, they were driving furiously back to the hub balancing large jars of alien drug on their laps and trying not to think about the two passed-out humans they had stashed in the trunk.

-TW-

Back at the hub, they transferred the young men to separate airtight holding cells. Tosh set up a filter to supply the captives with fresh air and a sensor to analyze what they exhaled, just in case there was something poisonous surrounding them. After that, there was nothing for it but to wait.

Ianto knew that the captives wouldn't show up digitally, but it was still unnerving glancing up at the security cameras and seeing the cells empty. He had to watch for any phantom opening and closing doors. _Just in case they wake up and manage to break the two-ton lock._ No one really knew what they were capable of.

What Tosh's machine had detected was contemporary human beings letting off massive amounts of rift energy. These humans must have had prolonged and repeated contact with something alien. Something that was supplying them with a substance that was unmistakably the drug that Torchwood had found on Hilary. _I think we've found our distributors._

The kids still weren't waking up; perhaps Owen had set the stun settings a little high. Jack went down to the cells to watch them after everyone else left for the night. He felt more secure looking at actual living, breathing forms than at a reinforced glass door on a computer screen. But their captives were still sleeping peacefully.

Jack was struck by how _young_ they were. Everyone was young compared to him, but sometimes the weathered people he surrounded himself with made him forget it. Maybe it was something about the faces of these two, slack in their unconsciousness, but Jack had an irresistible feeling of _wrongness_. _These are children_. Children had no place in the world of aliens and death.

_Does anyone, really?_

He ran a fingernail pensively across his palm. Then once more, sharply this time, digging deep to break the skin. Grounding himself. There was no such thing as belonging. There was no such thing as luck or fate or justice. _There is only the reality and rules that each of us creates for ourselves. The fictions we believe to avoid facing the enormity._

And that was what he had done. For better or for worse, he had decided that his work here on this planet mattered, that Ianto and Gwen and Tosh and Owen mattered. He had decided that he was going to protect them, that he was going to lead them. He was going to do what he had to.

All that was left was to begin.

-TW-

When Ianto came in the next morning, the hub was not as he'd left it. A chair was askew and carefully stacked papers had been scattered. Mostly-dried coffee was puddled at one end of the table. And the notebook where Ianto meticulously recorded every detail of every case was missing from its assigned place.

"Hey Ianto." Jack spoke softly but Ianto still jumped, banging his hip against the table as he spun around. Jack winced. "Sorry."

"It's nothing." Ianto shook it off.

"Well, that's not all that I'm sorry for."

Ianto held Jack's gaze. "Apology accepted."

"Thank you." Jack's tone was oddly formal. "Please sit down." Ianto sat.

Jack continued, his voice growing strained. "I want you to know... that you were right. There _is_ something - well, an accumulation of many things, that I'm having difficulty working past. But I've accepted it, finally, and I'm going to fight it. I'm starting to do better, and I promise I'm not going to be so vacant anymore. I owe it to you."

Ianto nodded. Jack did owe it to them.

"Also... I suppose you do deserve to know what happened, in a general sense, during that year that disappeared." Jack looked down for a moment at his hands, where the fingernails of one were nearly slicing into the cuticles of the other. This part was obviously so much harder for him. Ianto longed to reach out, but he knew that if he did he could upset the delicate balance in Jack's mind that was producing this candidness. After a beat, Jack continued. "There was a man, like that one I used to tell you about - an alien. He called himself the Master. You knew him as Harold Saxon."

_Saxon? The temporary Prime Minister? _

Jack pressed on. "He looked human, but he was a timelord. He only got elected through some type of low-level psychic control through the Archangel network. But the details don' matter. The important thing was that he brought an army and decimated the planet. He was so impossibly angry. He was fucking _insane_. He hurt people and destroyed nations to prove that he could, so that every miserable human being spent half their lives cowering from the sky in fear of him. We tried to stop him - the Doctor and I - but he captured us." Jack stared off into space for a long moment before continuing. "He didn't need me, didn't care about me - and that was lucky, in that place. So he killed me. But I gasped back to life two and a half minutes later." Jack gave a wry smile that was not really a smile. "And that- piqued his interest."

"Oh." Ianto couldn't think of anything else to say.

"He spent twelve months torturing, killing, and raping me." Jack's voice was completely toneless. "The whole time the planet burned and he made us watch it. He destroyed everything, killed on a whim, and eventually he found _you_." Now Jack was crying silently, but he kept the words coming out. "He tracked down the whole team eventually. Some of you he killed right in front of me and some of you he kept alive to ensure my... _compliance_. And the whole time the Doctor watched." Jack's voice rose in agitation. "Do you know how I originally died? I took a bullet, essentially, for the Doctor. Because he was good. He was a hero. He was the one who was going to save the world. And he let me believe that, he _encouraged _it, so that when he abandoned me two hours later I convinced myself it must have been a mistake. I searched for him for over a century. Everything was to find him. I made _this_" - he swept his arm wide, taking in all of the hub. "Just to find him. Then when I finally did, he told me that I was a freak, that I was _wrong_. He spent a year sitting there and listening to my screams while h_is _mortal enemy tortured me." He broke off. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say all that."

"No, it's okay. Go on."

"But most of all, _I did nothing_. I couldn't. I resisted the Master for a while, then I stopped once it meant _your_ life. But that was all. I was so weak and I didn't think I could ever forgive myself for it. I still don't know. In the end I helped saved the world, helped everyone escape, but for months before that _I_ was the one sitting there and watching as the only people I cared about died in agony." He stopped. Ianto silently reached out and took his hand. "And then that timeline reverted and I thought everything could be like it was before. I thought I could finally escape. But I can't. Somehow I can't forget. Sometimes," he looked Ianto in the eye, daring him to pull away. "Sometimes I don't know what's real. Whether I'm really here and awake, or if I'm still hanging unconscious back on the Master's ship. Sometimes I think I'm going insane."

"You're not," Ianto reassured him fervently.

"How are you so sure? I have a different concept of reality than you, different memories. I _am_ insane."

"You're not." But the words were weaker now.

"The world that I see is different from the one that everyone else does. But that's hardly new." He laughed, for real this time. "It really _is _nice to have someone else know. I think I can keep a better grasp on reality now. And I'll still be your leader, if you'll have me."

"Of course."

"Good." Jack grinned and plopped Ianto's notebook down on the table. "Because I'd hate to have done all that reading for nothing."


	5. Recognize Truth Even in the Hell Inside

**Chapter Five: Recognize Truth Even in the Hell Inside**

* * *

_**So here we are, you and me, on the last page. **_

_**Firstly, I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and thanks. The support I've gotten for this story has completely overwhelmed me. It's so easy for online life to turn into stats and graphs, but you kept it personal the whole way with your comments, reactions, and willingness to participate in extended email conversations.**_

_**Secondly, I am currently hard at work on a prequel, "Drowning Lessons." That will be considerably more explicit, considering the subject matter, but I'm aiming to match the physical violence with emotional intensity. All of the plot and conflict will also be internal/psychological, and for the most part there will be only two characters. I'm trying to experiment with my voice and unconventional narrative styles to convey the mounting insanity. However, if you enjoyed this, I hope that you'll at least give it a look when I publish it (likely in the fall). By the way, if anyone is interested in betaing, feel free to contact me. **_

_**Okay, now go ahead and finish this thing.**_

* * *

Ianto and Jack shared a laugh together watching Gwen try to interrogate the prisoners on the security cameras. They just couldn't help it - from their end it looked like she was having an earnest discussion with the opposite wall. Jack had made sure both boys were handcuffed securely to the table - they weren't taking any chances, but after that they'd trusted Gwen alone with them. She didn't like interrogations, but she was good at them. She somehow managed to make the prisoners feel like she was on their side.

Though apparently Gwen was not managing her usual magic at the moment. She had already been in there for hours, and Jack was starting to get worried.

Ianto remembered vividly when the prisoners had woken up that morning. It was the first time that he had seen them conscious. They were... disturbing. He couldn't put a finger on it. He'd seen creatures who truly were empty, whose eyes were just blank, but that wasn't what he saw here. These kids certainly had intention. But they didn't seem _calculating_, though... He supposed if he had to qualify it he'd say that they looked _free_. Which hardly made sense for a couple of humans relying on a drug. Their eyes looked so clear and discerning... what had chilled him most, he realized, was how they had looked at him as he passed them their breakfast through the door. Like they could see straight through his skin, could see who he was and his place in the world with absolute clarity. Even Ianto himself couldn't fathom that.

But it wasn't just him. After two hours of interrogating, Gwen looked visibly shaken. She spent more and more time looking down, and was unconsciously curling in on herself protectively. Ianto stole a quick glance at Jack out of the corner of his eye to see his take on the situation. Jack looked like he was on the verge of marching down there himself to punch something or other.

Ianto's eyes were drawn back to the screen by a sudden burst of movement. Gwen had stood up and, as they watched, marched straight out of the interrogation room.

"Useless," she announced a moment later as she came into the room were Jack and Ianto sat. "I couldn't get a thing out of them." Her words were nonchalant, but she looked shaken. "I can't describe it... It's like... Are we _sure_ they're human?"

"Yes," Jack said softly.

"Why? What did they say to you?" Ianto asked.

"Nothing, really." Gwen answered too quickly. "Just, you know... 'we didn't do anything', 'let us out'. It just creeped me out how they didn't seem to care."

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay. Tell Owen he can go in. He's been aching for a go."

Gwen left a tad too quickly.

_Owen will be able to get some information out of them_, Ianto assured himself. The doctor wasn't freaked out easily. The only things that could hurt him anymore were buried somewhere deep inside himself.

But forty minutes later Owen was back up.

"No more," he announced to them. "It's useless and I'm done." He stormed out.

Jack and Ianto exchanged a glance. "There's something they're not telling us," said Jack.

"I know."

"This drug is spreading. We _need_ to_ know_. I'm gonna have a go."

"No!" Ianto involuntarily reached out a hand to stop the other man, but froze when he realized what he was doing. Jack looked at him strangely. He tried to cover. "I... mean... we should talk to the others first. Then decide what to do."

"...Fine. But quickly."

"What _did _the prisoners tell you?" Jack asked in a feigned offhand voice.

Owen wasn't caught off guard, though. "They said we had no right to keep them here, they didn't know what we were talking about," he answered promptly. "Thing is, I don't think they even tried to make it sound honest. It was weird. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to get anything out of them."

"Well we've got to," Tosh cut in. She spun her laptop screen around so they could see a map covered in red dots. "These are the deaths we think are related to this drug," she explained. "And they're spreading. See, the first day they were all in this small area, but it's moved out all the way to here, today." She gestured. "I think everyone with the drug is spreading it."

Owen sat forward. "That place where they started is centered around were we found those two." He gestured vaguely towards the lower levels.

Tosh nodded. "I think they were the first. That's why they have all the rift energy, they're the ones who originally found the alien and have been meeting with it repeatedly ever since to get the drug... I haven't found traces on anyone else."

"So they're the only ones who can lead us to it," Jack said grimly.

"Precisely."

"But why?" Owen cut in. "What the hell does some alien care whether or not a couple of 21st century humans can get high?"

"Well, what does the drug do?" Jack answered his own question. "It destroys. As far as we know, everyone on it has gone on some sort of violence spree, and you said it'll probably degrade their own bodies in time. And it's spreading. Looks to me like someone's trying to clear cut."

"Clear cut the human race?" said Gwen, alarmed. "Aren't they supposed to want to enslave us or something?"

"Maybe they think our land has more worth than humans do." Owen shrugged. "I can kinda see their point, to be honest."

"Either way, we're in trouble."

"So we wait." Jack's voice was firm. "Give it time, they'll see that we mean business."

"Jack, this drug could be spreading as we speak! We don't have the time to wait-"

"Fine," Jack compromised. "Just give it until tonight. Then we'll do what we need to do."

-TW-

As the day progressed every team member had taken a shift watching a live feed for any sign of movement in the cells, but there was nothing. Jack had decided that watching from afar was better than going down and standing guard outside the cell; he didn't want to show any vulnerability to their prisoners.

So none of them had any idea what Owen was going to face when he went down at sunset to try another interrogation bout.

The rest of Torchwood waited anxiously, wringing their hands and unable to concentrate on anything for long. This was top priority; all of the scattered weevil attacks and unusual rift activity patterns had fallen to the wayside. Saving the human race from aliens didn't matter, really, if all the humans on the planet were reduced to emotionless shells.

_What would that look like?_

"Why do you think they do it?" asked Tosh. They had been sitting in silence, but everyone knew exactly what she was talking about. More silence followed. No one really knew.

It wasn't the escapism, the desire to not feel, that confused Ianto. _I can understand that_. Boy, could he. No, what Tosh was wondering - what they were all wondering - was where the violence came from. It was a very real possibility that there were already hundreds, or even thousands of people using the drug, that Torchwood was only discovering the ones with preexisting violent tendencies. The rest were lying low. _Or perhaps the violent ones are getting bribed somehow_. Maybe their alien supplier forced them to kill in order to earn their supply of the drug... Or maybe there was some quality of the drug itself that stimulated the violent centers of the brain...

There was just so much that they didn't know.

-TW-

They heard him before they saw him. Heavy, ponderous footsteps forcing their way up the stairs. Owen came into sight shaking and trying his damnedest not to show it.

Jack shot out of his chair and was gone in an instant, leaving Owen staring belatedly after him.

There was a moment of silence. "_What_," began Ianto slowly. "Did they say to you?"

Ianto did not think that Owen would answer, because Owen did not answer personal questions. But this was important. This was Jack, and this was his world, and Owen was going to tell him what he needed to know.

_I'm not giving in this time_, Ianto told Owen through his eyes and his posture. _So you sure as fuck better tell me_.

For once, Owen took a nonverbal cue.

"They knew things," he whispered. "Things that they had no way of knowing about my past and about my childhood. They knew _me_." Owen's eyes were defiant and unwavering, but his gaze was directed down at his feet. "They saw right through me. And they told me what was in there."

Ianto was out of his chair and down the stairs before Owen had a chance to sit down.

The walls in the interrogation room were made up of one-way mirrors, allowing Ianto to see the Captain from the bottom of the stairs. But he still didn't catch his breath until the door was open and he was face to face with Jack. Even then it took him a beat to realize that everything was fine. Jack was staring at him, looking slightly worried at Ianto's panicked expression. The two prisoners hadn't moved from their position of hours earlier.

Ianto's tie was askew. He straightened it as he self consciously sat down. "Sorry," he heard himself saying. "I just thought I should check on you, sir-" he saw by the way Jack drew back that he was going too far, so he quickly amended. "Check to see if you needed anything, I mean."

"I don't, thanks." Jack was looking at him with his head turned slightly to the side, like an animal trying to identify an unknown object by changing its perspective. "So... you can go?" It was an offer. He had a choice.

"I'll stay."

"Fine." Jack sat back down beside him. "We can do this all night," he warned the pair watching with amused expressions across the table. "We already know you've had repeated contact with an alien being..."

The words had the tired feel of long repetition and Ianto quickly tuned out. He started to notice things that he hadn't during the innumerable hours he had spent in this room over the years. Where the right hand wall met the ceiling there was an imperfection in the glass preventing it from being reflective. He occupied his mind with conceiving elaborate scenarios where that could be a deadly weakness, but he was hard pressed to find any. Eventually he had no choice but to study the creatures across from him.

One of them was looking at him, the one with a bar through his eyebrow. He rolled his eyes lazily away as soon as Ianto made eye contact, seeming to convey that Ianto wasn't worth even the effort of seeing. The other, whose entire neck was tattooed with an image of a dragon eating its own tail, did not once look away from Jack. He barely even blinked. Neither spoke, even when Jack shouted, stood, loomed over them, drew his gun.

"She _was_ strange." Eyebar finally observed. Ianto jumped, then realized he had never heard one of the boys' voices before. It was utterly inflectionless. "The one you say is alien."

Jack pressed the advantage. "What did she look like? Where is she now?"

But the prisoner had something else to say, and nothing was going to distract him now. "She smelled wrong. Because she came from somewhere else. But she did not smell nearly as wrong as you."

Jack was unshaken. "Yeah, tell me something I don't know. Care to continue?"

"It doesn't really matter, you know," said Tattoo, his casual language making his inflectionless tone all the more disturbing. "There is nothing that you do now can avert the future. Or to change the past."

Eyebar leaned forward, corner of his lips curving slightly upward. "_You're not ready_," he shared, with grin that spoke of a secret between him and Jack.

Jack's own smile turned brittle. "Thank you for your opinion." Eyebar looked satisfied and Ianto felt that he was missing something.

"Why are you even here?" Eyebar wondered languidly. "I understand them. This." He gestured dismissively at the building around them. "But you? Time was you wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this." Ianto was struck. Was Eyebar just speaking in generalities, taking guesses, or did he somehow have knowledge of Jack that even Ianto didn't have? _Is that even possible_? His brain said _no_ but his gut, remembering how the men had seemed to stare straight through him, whispered _yes_.

If Jack was perturbed, he wasn't showing it. "What matters is why _you're_ here. And how long it's going to take for you tell me where you've been getting the drug. That's all. Easy as that."

"As long as it takes," Tattoo repeated the words so slowly that it seemed like he was sounding them out to divine their meaning.

"Oh, I don't think you have time for that," chuckled Eyebar.

"If you don't destroy the source soon, this is all going to burn." They spoke like one voice.

"But even that doesn't _matter_."

"Because he is coming back."

"Who?" Jack's voice aimed for flat but failed slightly.

"Oh, you know him well. And he knows you." A delighted grin bloomed across the creature's face. "He's still out there, waiting for you. In the dark spaces."

"Oh, _Jack_," Eyebar shook his head regretfully. "You _know_, better than anyone, how flexible and distorted the world can be. People just don't die like they used to. And timelords, well-" he sighed. "They have all _kinds_ of tricks."

Ianto Jones did not understand the entirety of this conversation, but he understood when all of the blood drained out of Jack's face that enough was enough. "Jack, why don't you let me have a go," he tried.

Jack shook his head absently.

"You need a break," Ianto insisted.

When the other man refused again, he half-dragged him out into the hall himself. "_What are you doing_?" he hissed.

Jack gave him an innocent look. "I am interrogating two suspects," he replied blandly.

"Well, there's something strange about them," Ianto explained urgently. "Apart from their weird voices. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but they know things about your past, and they use them against you. That's how they got to Gwen and Owen. I think," he finished lamely.

"I know."

"Ah, you do?"

"Of course. It's pretty obvious. How else would one of them drive a lonely old woman to suicide?" He shrugged. "When dealing with alien technology, the most absurd sounding explanation often turns out to be the right one." With that he turned around and went back in. Ianto belatedly followed.

The prisoners were obstinate, and except for periodic half-hearted jabs that bounced off of Jack they didn't say much of anything. The interrogation continued untroubled for long enough that even Ianto started to feel embarrassed about being so worried.

It wasn't until fourty-three minutes later that Ianto noticed the change.

He caught Tattoo shooting a furtive glance at Eyebar, who responded with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. At first he thought that he had imagined it. It wasn't until Eyebar sent the glance back to Tattoo a minute later that he was sure of what he had seen. Ianto looked to Jack to see if the captain had noticed the same thing. It was the first time he'd checked on Jack in a while, Ianto realized, and he noticed a distinct difference. The other man was wearing down. Ianto would be surprised if Jack was even aware of Ianto sitting behind him.

Ianto watched the interrogation with renewed interest. There was something essentially changed about the prisoners now. Everything from their eye movements to their posture was devolving. Ianto realized with a jolt that there was now inflection in their voices. The voice modulation was nowhere near what would be considered healthy, but it was more dramatic than it had been an hour earlier. And their eyes... were _wider_, he decided. There was less languidity behind them. More intention. _But intention to what?_

Soon, the changes were so obvious that even exhausted Jack had to notice. Little nervous tics appeared. Eyebar wrung his hands under the table; Tattoo couldn't keep his left leg still - and both began to act more how one would expect a prisoner to act after having been the subject of an interrogation for several hours.

Now it was Ianto and Jack's turn to exchange a look.

_The drug is wearing off._

But desperation made the druggies vicious.

Where they previously leaned back in their chairs and spoke pensively, now they shot forward and shouted. They screamed at Jack, extracting dozens of bits of his history that Ianto had heard of and far more that he hadn't. A derisive Eyebar reminded Jack of how he had abandoned Estelle and been too weak and sentimental to even do it properly, how his continued involvement with her had led to her death. Ianto didn't believe this was technically the case, but Jack clearly did. Tattoo accused him of wrongs against someone named Elizabeth, foretold horrible things for another someone named Alice.

And the whole time Jack pressed forward valiant and doomed.

He was simply repeating the same words again like a mantra, Ianto realized. The words were weak and meaningless. He just wouldn't leave.

_This is useless. _They were getting nowhere. Ianto was sure Gwen and Owen had left long before it had gotten this bad for them.

Yet still Jack would not leave.

Unable to extricate the other man, Ianto tried to interrogate in his stead. He asked the questions, raised his voice, growled and screamed when he didn't get a response. When that failed he got physically in between Jack and the prisoners

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't disrupt the debilitating connection between them. The two men across the table looked through Ianto from the one side, and Jack looked through him from the other side. He was functionally invisible. No, worse than that – he wasn't even there.

Ianto did not know what he was doing until his handgun was out and pointed straight at Eyebar's forehead. "Shut. _Up_." he hissed fiercely, and they did. _Finally_. "Now," he said clearly. "You are going to tell me where you get supplied with the drug, or I am going to put a bullet between your eyes."

Eyebar tilted his head to the side quizzically, as if examining an unexpected intricacy in a piece of art. An amused smile played about the corner of his mouth. "Okay then," he said calmly. "Do it."

"I am not bluffing."

"I didn't think you were."

"This is your final warning."

"And then what? You shoot me? End it? Save me the trouble."

"Don't you understand?" Tattoo shook his head ruefully, and Ianto swung the gun around so that it was pointing at him. He didn't seem to notice. "We always knew our supply would run out. Something like this can't last forever. I'll admit we didn't expect it would be in a place like this, but the place doesn't matter."

"We both decided a long time ago that we were never going back to how it was before," said Eyebar softly. "This is it for us, anyway."

"And yet," Tattoo looked Ianto straight in the eye. "You won't do it."

And Ianto found that he wouldn't.

Though his finger trembled on the trigger, he eventually had to lower the gun. Killing either one of them wouldn't solve anything. He got the sinking feeling that neither of them would give Torchwood any information until it suited their own purposes. The purposes that at the moment seemed to be suicide.

He sat back down, and was once again invisible to all of them.

"We can see _everything_," Eyebar explained to Jack with a manic glint in his eyes. "You _must_ feel that way too, sometimes. Sure, we get bits of the future, fragments of the past, but the way we see the _now_." He paused for effect. "Complete clarity. Utterly objective. We can see all those little human lives, as puny as ours used to be, and track their course to destruction. Sometimes we help it along. Sometimes we just sit back and enjoy the show."

"Because we are never a part of it." Tattoo closed his eyes.

"Never a part of it," Jack repeated in a whisper.

Ianto grabbed Jack's shoulder and pulled, made his voice hard and strong. "_Leave_, Jack. This is absurd." But he was unseen.

"But you're not objective, are you?" Tattoo continued. "You _could_ be. You have been. But then you'd realize how little is tethering you here, and you'd leave. But there's nothing for you anywhere else. And that would be unbearable. So you don't leave, do you? You pretend you care until you've convinced yourself that you actually do. You fool yourself." He chuckled.

"You are being an idiot, Jack," Ianto insisted. "Just take a break for few minutes. Please."

"No," Jack's lips barely moved as he absently brushed Ianto off. "I'm fine. I'm _strong_. I can't keep running from the memories forever."

"And we're only telling him what he already knows," Eyebar contributed unhelpfully.

"_You_ shut up." Ianto turned back to Jack. "Is that what this is about? If you're trying to inure yourself this is _not_ the way to do it! Not all at once, not when someone is trying to hurt you!"

The other man did not even acknowledge that Ianto had spoken.

"Yes, leave." Tattoo concurred with Jack's unspoken message. "You're not needed here."

"Maybe I'm not needed," Ianto said clearly. "But I choose to be here nevertheless."

Eyebar held eye contact with him for a beat longer than he had previously. "Do you want to know the truth?" he finally asked.

"Not _your _truth." But the question was once again not directed at him.

"Listen to me carefully, Jack Harkness." Jack leaned forward to catch the soft voice, and Eyebar mirrored him across the table. Ianto's softly scrabbling fingers couldn't separate them as Eyebar delivered his final secret.

"_You will never forget._"

Eyebar sat back, satisfied with his message, and Tattoo cut in. "The only way out is to stop caring. You can join is if you like."

"_Never_," breathed Jack.

"Then it will destroy you from the inside out," Tattoo explained in a matter-of-fact tone. "You know that it has already begun. You are not strong enough to withstand the accumulated history of centuries, and soon Torchwood will see what a coward their Captain really is."

"That is the truth," Eyebar concurred.

It was the way that they said it. Their two voices had such similar intention that they merged into an indistinguishable whole, pure and clear and certain. Ianto understood for the first time how a rational human being could come to believe that another spoke with the voice of the gods. There certainly seemed to be a higher power here.

It was the time that they said it. Everything was just slightly out of joint, like a machine sputtering along with a gear one size too small. And if it seemed that way to Ianto, who had experienced a smooth progression from the before of the disappearing year to the after, it must be so much more to the man who had lived through the terrible year then bounced back to this one with his memories intact.

Most of the all, it was the person that they said it to. Jack, who felt responsible for Torchwood and for the planet and abhorred himself for every mistake. Jack, who was already raw from the shame and humiliation of being broken, albeit from the outside in. Jack, whose worst fears were realized in the future that their prophets.

Jack Harkness collapsed.

Ianto watched him fall in slow motion and at the same time it happened too quickly for him to react. The captives-turned-interrogators spoke to Ianto for the first time of their own volition. "_Tonight_. _Midnight_," they hissed as one. "In the parking lot behind the museum, _she will come_." Ianto heard the words clearly through the frenzy, but by that same trick of time was too hurried to wonder why they were giving up the information now.

His last image was of their faces, grinning manically at him as he heaved his captain out of the room.

"Jack! Listen to me, Jack! Take deep breaths." Remembering how his voice had helped sooth the Captain through his nightmares he tried it again now, but he wasn't getting the same effect. The situation was completely different. Jack was firmly ensconced in reality. But this time reality was where the horror was.

"_Don't touch me_," Jack ground out.

"You need to listen to me," said Ianto urgently, aware that they were running out of time. "That is not going to happen. They cannot see the future. All that they can see is what would most hurt you, so that is what they use."

"But... I can feel it happening." Jack's speech was agonizingly slow.

"And you're fighting it. You're winning." Jack shook his head. "You _are_." Catching sight of the clock on the wall, he realized with a jolt that it was nearing 11:30. "But you need to hold it together right now. Just for a few hours. The drop is happening _now_, and we have to stop it. Can you do that?"

Jack did not respond.

An icy sense of resolve overtook Ianto as he made the decision. He suspected that he was going regret it tremendously, but at the moment it was the best of all of the possible alternatives.

"_Wait here_," he whispered fiercely, and ran.

Owen had stored the confiscated supply of the drug only a floor below, and that was where Ianto went now. He briefly debated how best to administer it, then finally guessed and dissolved a few tablespoons in a glass of water. He carried it sloppily as he ran back, sloshing the milky liquid onto his shoes, but there was still enough left in the glass by the time he made it back to Jack. _I hope_.

"Drink this," he said.

-TW-

They were probably screwed.

There were four museums in Cardiff and, at twenty minutes to midnight, there wasn't the time to extract more details. Jack was out of commission. In what way, Ianto wasn't exactly sure, but at least looked calm now. The last thing Ianto wanted to do was leave the Captain alone with a strange drug working its way through his system, but even that was better than leaving him alone in a state of panic. Probably.

Tosh, Owen, Gwen, and Ianto split up, but even so they were barely going to make their destinations in time. The taxi spit Ianto out at the front of the darkened natural history museum at eight minutes to midnight, and he ran like hell. There was an enormous and deserted back parking lot, at odds with the rest of the cramped city.

_Peripheral places attract peripheral people._

He waited, and they came.

Four minutes to midnight, like clockwork. A boy and a woman, walking in tandem to the center. The darkness obscured their faces but he knew he would find blankness there. "I've found them," he breathed into the comm.

"Everyone else, stay where you are," Gwen's voice crackled back. "There could be multiple drop locations."

Ianto nodded, though no one could see him. He was alone.

The woman knelt as the boy looked on and took something out from under her coat. It was hard, round, and undeniably alien. As he watched the strange bluish metal started to glow, barely perceptible but strengthening.

He checked his watch. 11:58. Time was up.

Ianto drew his gun.

"Stand up. Hands above your heads." He noticed immediately that these two were not nearly as far gone as the ones Torchwood had captured. There was fear as they raised their shaking hands. Fear and derision. _Oh yeah, that's right. I'm not worth their spit._

_Fuck that._

"What is that?" he challenged, gesturing with the barrel of his gun.

The boy opened his mouth and Ianto just _knew _something sarcastic was going to come out. "Shut up, because I am _done _with listening to your shit," he interrupted before the boy could speak. " Tell me what that is and how it works, or I shoot something. Go."

There was something in his eyes this time that kept him from being dismissed. "It's a transmitter," explained the boy reluctantly. "They said she comes through it. We're supposed to put it there and wait."

"Ah." Ianto swung his gun around to the transmitter and started to depress the trigger.

"_No_!" The boy flung his body across the machine, and Ianto had to restrain himself. There was still a human inside that body, somewhere. "No! No, no, no, no, _no_." The boy shook. "You _can't_. You don't understand. You _can't_."

Ianto slowly lowered his gun. _This boy may not know how much violence this drug caused_, he realized_._ He could just be a poor kid from a broken family, who happened to have the wrong friends at the wrong time. _ I can't hold him accountable for crimes I don't know he committed._

"What don't I understand?" he probed softly.

"What it will feel like to _care _again."

"I know it will hurt," he said softly. "But you lived with it for years. No matter what it is, you can live through it. Trust me."

"No, no, _no_." The kid squeezed his eyes tightly shut and fell to a crouch as he shook his head vigorously. "It's _not_ the same, because before I hadn't-" he broke off.

"Hadn't what?" Ianto had a sinking feeling.

"Hadn't... killed him."

"Who?" Ianto's voice was flat.

"M-Mark. He worked at Jubilee, and he used to tease me at school, and I was too scared to stand up to him. But then I wasn't scared anymore, so I did."

Ianto remembered the gruesome murder he had witnessed on the CCTV and leveled the gun at the boy's head.

"It's not his fault," said the woman softly.

He swung the gun around. "Then whose is it?"

"It's this." She gestured to the device. "What we've been taking. I'm a drug counselor. I know the signs. And even I couldn't stop." She laughed humourlessly. "Haven't you ever felt it?" She pled. She was seeking absolution from him, not trying to turn him against himself, so he let her continue. Thirty seconds left.

"The thrill of the control," she went on. "I see you standing there, with that gun in your hands, in charge of whether we live or die. Someone's dealt you a bad hand, but this is your chance to reaffirm yourself. So you have to understand, that is the only thing that we feel. It's strange," she considered. "I would have expected another emotion to dominate. Fear, perhaps, or anger. But instead, the only thing that touches us is _violence_. So we hurt."

"I see." Ianto shot the transmitter.

It rent with an anticlimactic ping that blended into a guttural scream from the boy's throat, and a moan from the woman's.

"_What_ did you _do?_"he cried.

Ianto Jones walked away.

"I took care of it here," he spoke into the comm. "Permanently disabled the transmission device. Any action there?"

"None," came the myriad responses.

"Good. I think we've finally ended it then." He took a deep breath. "It turns out we were wrong. It wasn't that the people were naturally violent, it was that the drug that encouraged it. Made it the only thing they could feel."

Then Ianto realized what he should have several seconds before. The thing welled up inside him until he expelled it into a single word.

"_Jack_."

Ianto Jones ran. The taxi had left, and he couldn't bear to be stationary long enough to catch another one, so he ran across the streets of Cardiff like the maniac that he was all of the way back to the hub. He could hear voices begging him to stop, to wait for them, not to go in alone. He ripped his earpiece out as he ran.

It took him agonizingly long to fumble out the key to the facade of the travel agency. His fingers slipped and it took him three tries to key in the correct Torchwood code. Then he had to wait as the door rotated languorously open, all the while praying that Jack would be behind it.

_Just let him be here_, he bargained with any higher power who would hear him. _I'll do anything. Just don't let him have left. Don't let him have hurt anyone._

The moments of terror in the druggies' eyes as they realized their supply was going to run out played over and over again in Ianto's mind, and he cursed himself in every way he knew how for allowing Jack to be in this position. The door finally creaked open enough for him to slip through and he shot out, stumbling with his momentum once he reached the other side. "_Please_," he panted.

His prayers were answered. Jack was there.

Holding a bloodied knife.

Jack Harkness's eyes were not blank as Ianto had expected. They were vibrant, alive, full of tears and terror and knowledge.

"I can see everything," whispered Jack in wonder, his eyes focused into something that Ianto couldn't fathom. Slowly, as if moving through a heavy syrup, Jack brought his hands together up to his face. He examined them curiously, as if divining the vital secret of existence from the twin slashes across his wrists.

Ianto took two taciturn steps forward and punched his Captain in the face as hard as he could.

Jack Harkness slumped to the floor unconscious, and his lover stood above him, shaking his head fiercely. "Oh no you _don't_," said Ianto Jones.

-TW-

Jack Harkness woke in pain.

It wasn't the black eye that he felt, or the dull throbbing that emanated from his bandaged wrists. No, he was writhing under the raw agony of hurtling from emptiness into life.

It was the most glorious thing in the world.

He gradually focused on his surroundings to find himself tucked meticulously into a hospital bed in the hub. An IV dripped saline solution into his wrist, and he vaguely recalled suffering some sort of blood loss. It wasn't until he saw the righteously pissed Ianto Jones glaring at him from the chair beside the bed that he remembered precisely how the blood loss had come about.

"Sorry," he croaked.

"I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."

"I'm getting tired of saying it," he admitted ruefully.

"Well then, stop doing stupid things."

"I will," he promised.

"No you won't." Ianto sighed and looked severely into Jack's eyes. "_Don't you ever do that to me again_."

"I won't," he swore.

Ianto nodded, once. He looked at his fingernails, looked at the foot of the bed, looked somewhere over Jack's shoulder. "I don't understand... You _knew_ it wouldn't work. You always come back." He finally looked Jack straight at Jack, and there were tears in his eyes as he whispered. "What did it feel like?"

"The drug? It was..." The experience was inhuman; it defied human language. He chose his words carefully, struggling to approximate the feeling. "Everything I saw... Everything I remembered. I understood it... _objectively_. I saw the truth of the world."

"What must we have looked like to you?" Ianto laughed off the question without a hint of humour. "Ants, scurrying around enveloped in our angsty little lives... Fretting over meaningless things. Full of sound and fury—" Tears bubbled up out of that place that he had stored his hopes until he choked on the words. Jack reached out his unimpeded arm and grabbed Ianto, pulling him close until he was half lying against Jack, cramped but secure on the narrow bed.

"No..." Jack rested his chin on the other man's head, and closed his eyes as his own tears streamed down. "No. I did see you, Ianto Jones. And you were so beautiful but I couldn't _see _it. The world was like... sugarglass. Brittle. Destined to be broken and I could see precisely how and I didn't _care_."

"You're not reassuring me here," Ianto mumbled through his tears.

"No, I don't mean – I cut myself to _escape_ it. Because, for all its enormity, that world was so minuscule. It was just _things_. The only way you can touch the real enormity is through people – through fighting, and knowing... and loving. That is _my_ truth. That is the truth I choose, and I'm sticking to it."

"So, what goes on in this world of yours?"

"There's someone there. Someone strong enough to make me live through hell. And I'll be damned if I'm not going to do it for him."

"Good. You'd better."

And that was the truth. Jack Harkness had done a lot of stupid things, and wasted a lot of time hating himself for them. But he had to make a pact with himself if he planned to go on and be of any use to the world. He was going to need to accept some failures, and some cowardice, and some shame. There, perhaps, was real strength: calling a truce even when the enemy was yourself.

_Captain Jack Harkness was going to do what needed to be done._

* * *

**_Well. Deep breath. Thank you for being here with me._**


End file.
